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MAN  AND  NATURE ; 


OR, 


PHYSICAL  GEOGRAPHY 


AS  MODIFIED  BY  HUMAN  ACTION, 


BY 

GEORGE    P.  MARSH. 


"  Not  all  the  winds,  and  storms,  and  earthquakes,  and  seas,  r.nd  seasons  of  the  world,  hare 
done  so  much  to  revolutionize  the  earth  as  MAN,  the  power  of  an  endless  life,  has  done  since 
the  day  he  caine  forth  upon  it,  and  received  dominion  over  it." — H.  BUSHNELL,  Sermon  on  the 
Power  qf  an  Endless  Life. 


NEW  YOEK: 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER  &  CO.,  No.  654  BROADWAY. 

1807. 


1  O 

2> 


ENTERED,  according:  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1SW,  by 
CUAELES  SCEIBNEE, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Southern  District  of 

New  York. 


JOHN  F.  TROW  4  CO. 

PRINTER,  STEREOTYPER,  AND  ELECTROTYPETV, 

46,  48,  &  50  Greene  St..  New  York. 


PREFACE. 


THE  object  of  the  present  volume  is  :  to  indicate  the  char 
acter  and,  approximately,  the  extent  of  the  changes  produced 
by  human  action  in  the  physical  conditions  of  the  globe  we 
inhabit;  to  point  out  the  dangers  of  imprudence  and  the  neces 
sity  of  caution  in  all  operations  which,  on  a  large  scale,  inter 
fere  with  the  spontaneous  arrangements  of  the  organic  or  the 
inorganic  world  ;  to  suggest  the  possibility  and  the  importance 
of  the  restoration  of  disturbed  harmonies  and  the  material  im 
provement  of  waste  and  exhausted  regions  ;  and,  incidentally, 
to  illustrate  the  doctrine,  that  man  is,  in  both  kind  and  degree, 
a  power  of  a  higher  order  than  any  of  the  other  forms  of  ani 
mated  life,  which,  like  him,  are  nourished  at  the  table  of 
bounteous  nature. 

In  the  rudest  stages  of  life,  man  depends  upon  spontaneous 
animal  and  vegetable  growth  for  food  and  clothing,  and  his 
consumption  of  such  products  consequently  diminishes  the 
numerical  abundance  of  the  species  which  serve  his  uses.  At 
more  advanced  periods,  he  protects  and  propagates  certain 

223769 


PREFACE. 


esculent  vegetables  and  certain  fowls  and  quadrupeds,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  wars  upon  rival  organisms  which  prey  upon 
these  objects  of  his  care  or  obstruct  the  increase  of  their  num 
bers.  Hence  the  action  of  man  upon  the  organic  world  tends 
to  subvert  the  original  balance  of  its  species,  and  while  it  reduces 
the  numbers  of  some  of  them,  or  even  extirpates  them  alto 
gether,  it  multiplies  other  forms  of  animal  and  vegetable  life. 

The  extension  of  agricultural  and  pastoral  industry  involves 
an  enlargement  of  the  sphere  of  man's  domain,  by  encroach 
ment  upon  the  forests  which  once  covered  the  greater  part  of  the 
earth's  surface  otherwise  adapted  to  his  occupation.  The  fell 
ing  of  the  woods  has  been  attended  with  momentous  .conse 
quences  to  the  drainage  of  the  soil,  to  the  external  configura 
tion  of  its  surface,  and  probably,  also,  to  local  climate  ;  and 
the  importance  of  human  life  as  a  transforming  power  is,  per 
haps,  more  clearly  demonstrable  in  the  influence  man  has  thus 
exerted  upon  superficial  geography  than  in  any  other  result  of 
his  material  effort. 

Lands  won  from  the  woods  must  be  both  drained  and  irri 
gated  ;  river  vbanks  and  maritime  coasts  must  be  secured  by 
means  of  artificial  bulwarks  against  inundation  by  inland  and 
by  ocean  floods  ;  and  the  needs  of  commerce  require  the  im 
provement  of  natural,  and  the  construction  of  artificial  chan 
nels  of  navigation.  Thus  man  is  compelled  to  extend  over  the 
unstable  waters  the  empire  he  had  already  founded  upon  the 
solid  land. 

The  upheaval  of  the  bed  of  seas  and  the  movements  of 
water  and  of  wind  expose  vast  deposits  of  sand,  which  occupy 


PKEFACE. 


space  required  for  the  convenience  of  man,  and  often,  by  the 
drifting  of  their  particles,  overwhelm  the  fields  of  human  indus 
try  with  invasions  as  disastrous  as  the  incursions  of  the  ocean. 
On  the  other  hand,  on  many  coasts,  sand  hills  both  protect 
the  shores  from  erosion  by  the  waves  and  currents,  and  shelter 
valuable  grounds  from  blasting  sea  winds.  Man,  therefore, 
ii:ust  sometimes  resist,  sometimes  promote,  the  formation  and 
growth  of  dunes,  and  subject  the  barren  and  -flying  sands  to 
the  same  obedience  to  his  will  to  which  he  has  reduced  other 
forms  of  terrestrial  surface. 

Besides  these  old  and  comparatively  familiar  methods  of 
material  improvement,  modern  ambition  aspires  to  yet  grander 
achievements  in  the  conquest  of  physical  nature,  and  projects 
are  meditated  which  quite  eclipse  the  boldest  enterprises  hith 
erto  undertaken  for  the  modification  of  geographical  surface. 

The  natural  character  of  the  various  fields  where  human 
industry  has  effected  revolutions  so  important,  and  where  the 
multiplying  population  and  the  impoverished  resources  of  the 
globe  demand  new  triumphs  of  mind  over  matter,  suggests  a 
corresponding  division  of  the  general  subject,  and  I  have  con 
formed  the  distribution  of  the  several  topics  to  the  chronologi 
cal  succession  in  which  man  must  be  supposed  to  have  ex 
tended  his  sway  over  the  different  provinces  of  his  material 
kingdom.  I  have,  then,  in  the  Introductory  chapter,  stated, 
in  a  comprehensive  way,  the  general  effects  and  the  prospec 
tive  consequences  of  human  action  upon  the  earth's  surface 
and  the  life  which  peoples  it.  This  chapter  is  followed  by 
four  others  in  which  I  have  traced  the  history  of  man's  Indus- 


FREFACE. 


try  as  exerted  upon  Animal  and  Vegetable  Life,  upon  the 
Woods,  upon  the  Waters,  and  upon  the  Sands  ;  and  to  these 
I  have  added  a  concluding  chapter  upon  Probable  and  Possi 
ble  Geographical  Revolutions  yet  to  be  effected  by  the  art  of 
man. 

I  have  only  to  add  what,  indeed,  sufficiently  appears  upon 
every  page  of  the  volume,  that  I  address  myself  not  to  professed 
physicists,  but  to  the  general  intelligence  of  educated,  observ 
ing,  and  thinking  men  ;  and  that  my  purpose  is  rather  to  make 
practical  suggestions  than  to  indulge  in  theoretical  specula 
tions  properly  suited  to  a  different  class  from  that  to  which 
those  for  whom  I  write  belong. 

GEORGE  P.  MARSH. 

Deceniber  1,  1863. 


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Missionaire  i  Lappmarken.     Stockholm,  1831.     8vo. 
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Lampridius.     Vita  Elagabali  in  Script.  Hist.,  August. 
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Xll  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   LIST   OF   WORKS    CONSULTED. 

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL    LIST    OF  WORKS    CONSULTED.  Xlll 

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XIV  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   LIST   OF  WOKKS   CONSULTED. 

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Tschudi,  Fried-rich  von.    Ueber  die  Landwirthschaftliche  Bedeutung  der 

Vogel.     St.  Gallen,  1854.     12mo. 

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Paris,  1857.     8vo. 
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8vo. 

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Milano,  1850.     4to. 

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Waltershausen,  W.  Sartorius  von-.      Ueber  den   Sicilianischen  Ackerbau 

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Wien,  1853.     2  vols.  8vo. 
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18GO.    8vo. 

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Paris,  1860.     1  vol.  12mo. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I.     ; 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Natural  Advantages  of  the  Territory  of  the  Roman  Empire — Physical  Decay  of  that 
Territory  and  of  other  parts  of  the  Old  World — Causes  of  the  Decay— Xew 
School  of  Geographers— Reaction  of  Man  upon  Nature — Observation  of  Nature 
— Cosmical  and  Geological  Influences — Geographical  Influence  of  Man — Uncer 
tainty  of  our  Meteorological  Knowledge — Mechanical  Effects  produced  by  Man 
on  the  surface  of  the  Earth — Importance  and  Possibility  of  Physical  Restoration 
— Stability  of  Nature — Restoration  of  Disturbed  Harmonies — Destructiveness 
of  Man — Physical  Improvement — Human  and  Brute  Action  Compared — Forms 
and  Formations  most  liable  to  Physical  Degradation — Physical  Decay  of  New- 
Countries — Corrupt  Influence  of  Private  Corporations,  Note,  .  .  .1 


CHAPTER  II. 

TRANSFER,  MODIFICATION,  AND  EXTIRPATION  OF  TEGETABLE  AND  OF  ANIMAL  SPECIES. 

Modern  Geography  embraces  Organic  Life — Transfer  of  Vegetable  Life — Foreign 
Plants  grown  in  the  United  States — American  Plants  grown  in  Europe — Modes 
of  Introduction  of  Foreign  Plants— Vegetables,  how  affected  by  transfer  to 
Foreign  Soils— Extirpation  of  Vegetables — Origin  of  Domestic  Plants — Organic 
Life  as  a  Geological  and  Geographical  Agency — Origin  and  Transfer  of  Domestic 
Animals — Extirpation  of  Animals — Numbers  of  Birds  in  the  United  States — 
Birds  as  Sowers  and  Consumers  of  Seeds,  and  as  Destroyers  of  Insects — Dimi 
nution  and  Extirpation  of  Birds — Introduction  of  Birds — Utility  of  Insects  and 
Worms — Introduction  of  Insects — Destruction  of  Insects — Reptiles — Destruc 
tion  of  Fish — Introduction  and  Breeding  of  Fish — Extirpation  of  Aquatic  Ani 
mals—Minute  Organisms,  .  .  .  .  ,  .  .  .  ,57 


XV111  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  III. 

THK   WOODS. 

The  Habitable  Earth  originally  Wooded  —  The  Forest  does  not  furnish  Food  for  Man- 
First  Removal  of  the  Woods—  Effects  of  Fire  on  Forest  Soil  —  Effects  of  the  De 
struction  of  the  Forest  —  Electrical  Influence  of  Trees  —  Chemical  Influence  of 
the  Forest. 

Influence  of  the  Forest,  considered  as  Inorganic  Matter,  on  Temperature  : 
a,  Absorbing  and  Emitting  Surface  ;  6,  Trees  as  Conductors  of  Heat  ;  c,  Trees 
in  Summer  and  in  Winter  ;  of,  Dead  Products  of  Trefli  ;  -  <?>  Trees  as  "a"  Shelter 


* 


to  Grounds  to  the  leeward  of  them  ;  /,  Trees  as  a  Protection  against 
The  Forest,  as  Inorganic  Matter,  tends  to  mitigate  extremes. 

Trees  as  Organisms  :  Specific  Temperature  —  Total  Influence  of  the  Forest 
on  Temperature. 

Influence  of  Forests  on  the  Humidity  of  the  Air  and  the  Earth  :  a,  as  In 
organic  Matter  ;  6,  as  Organic  —  Wood  Mosses  and  Fungi  —  Flow  of  Sap  —  Ab 
sorption  and  Exhalation  of  Moisture  by  Trees  —  Balance  of  Conflicting  Influ 
ences  —  Influence  of  the  Forest  on  Temperature  and  Precipitation  —  Influence  of 
the  Forest  on  the  Humidity  of  the  Soil  —  Its  Inilucnue  on  the  Flow  of  Springs  — 
General  Consequences  of  the  Destruction  of  the  Woods  —  Literature  and  Condi 
tion  of  the  Forest  in  different  Countries  —  The  Influence  of  the  Forest  on  Inun 
dations  —  Destructive  Action  of  Torrents  —  The  Po  and  its  Deposits—  Mountain 
Slides  —  Protection  against  the  Fall  of  Rocks  and  Avalanches  by  Trees  —  Princi 
pal  Causes  of  the  Destruction  of  the  Forest  —  American  Forest  Trees  —  Special 
Causes  of  the  Destruction  of  European  Woods  —  Royal  Forests  and  Game  Lawa 
—Small  Forest  Plants,  Vitality  of  Seeds—  Utility  of  the  Forest—  The  Forests  of 
Europe  —  Forests  of  the  United  States  and  Canada  —  The  Economy  of  the  Forest 

—  European  and  American  Trees  Compared  —  Sylviculture  —  Instability  of  Amer 
ican  Life,       ........        .....     128 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  WATERS. 

Land  artificially  won  from  the  Waters:  a,  Exclusion  of  the  Sea  by  Diking;  6, 
Draining  of  Lakes  and  Marshes  ;  e,  Geographical  Influence  of  such  Operations 

—  Lowering  of  Lakes  —  Mountain  Lakes  —  Climatic  Effects  of  Draining  Lakes 
and  Marshes. 

Geographical  and  Climatic  Effects  of  Aqueducts,  Reservoirs,  and  Canals  — 
Surface  and  Underdraining,  and  their  Climatic  and  Geographical  Effects- 
Irrigation  and  its  Climatic  and  Geographical  Effects. 

Inundations  and  Torrents  :  a,  River  Embankments  ;  i,  Floods  of  the  Ar- 
deche  ;  c,  Crushing  Force  of  Torrents  ;  J,  Inundations  of  1856  in  France  ;  e, 
Remedies  against  Inundations  —  Consequences  if  the  Nile  had  been  confined  by 
Lateral  Dikes. 

Improvements  in  the  Val  di  Chiana  —  Improvements  in  the  Tuscan  Maremme 
—Obstruction  of  River  Mouths—  Subterranean  Waters—  Artesian  Wells—  Arti 
ficial  Springs—  Economizing  Precipitation,  .  .  .  .  .  .  330 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS.  xix 

j\ 

CHAPTER  Y. 

THE  SANDS. 

Origin  of  Sand — Sand  now  carried  down  to  the  Sea — The  Sands  of  Egypt  and  the 
adjacent  Desert — The  Suez  Canal — The  Sands  of  Egypt — Coast  Dunes  and  Suud 
Plains — Sand  Banks — Dunes  on  Coast  of  America — Dunes  of  Western  Europe — • 
Formation  of  Dunes — Character  of  Dune  Sand — Interior  Structure  of  Dunes — 
Form  of  Dunes — Geological  Importance  of  Dunes — Inland  Dunes — Age,  Char 
acter,  and  Permanence  of  Dunes — Use  of  Dunes  as  Barrier  against  the  Sea — 
Encroachments  of  the  Sea — The  Liimfjord — Encroachments  of  the  Sea — Drift 
ing  of  Dune  Sands — Dunes  of  Gascony — Dunes  of  Denmark — Dunes  of  Prussia — > 
Artificial  Formation  of  Dunes — Trees  suitable  for  Dune  Plantations — Extent  of 
Dunes  in  Europe — Dune  Vineyards  of  Cape  Breton — Removal  of  Dunes — Inland 
Sand  Plains — The  Landes  of  Gascony — The  Belgian  Campine — Sands  and 
Steppes  of  Eastern  Europe — Advantages  of  Reclaiming  Dunes — Government 
Works  of  Improvement, 451 

CHAPTER  VI. 

PROJECTED  OR  POSSIBLE   GEOGRAPHICAL  CHANGES  BY  MAN. 

Cutting  of  Marine  Isthmuses — The  Suez  Canal — Canal  across  Isthmus  of  Darien — 
Canals  to  the  Dead  Sea — Maritime  Canals  in  Greece — f1anni  *?  fi«-os — f!<>r>e  *7uJ 
Canal— Diversion  of  the  Nile— Changes  in  the  Caspian— Improvements  in  North 
American  Hydrography— Diversion  of  the  Rhine— Draining  of  the  Zuiderzee— 
Waters  of  the  Karst — Subterranean  Waters  of  Greece— Soil  below  Rock — Cov 
ering  Rocks  with  Earth— Wadies  of  Arabia  Petraea— Incidental  Effects  of  Human 
Action— Resistance  to  great  Natural  Forces— Effects  of  Mining — Espy's  The 
ories — River  Sediment — Nothing  small  in  Nature, 517 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

JTATURAL  ADVANTAGES  OP  THE  TERRITORY  OF  THE  ROMAN  EMPIRE PHYS 
ICAL  DECAY  OP  THAT  TERRITORY  AND  OP  OTHER  PARTS  OF  THE  OLD  WORLD 

CAUSES    OF    THE    DECAY NEW    SCHOOL    OP    GEOGRAPHERS — REACTION    OF 

MAN    UPON    NATURE — OBSERVATION  OF  NATURE COSMICAL   AND    GEOLOGICAL 

INFLUENCES — GEOGRAPHICAL  INFLUENCE  OF  MAN — UNCERTAINTY  OF  OUB 
METEOROLOGICAL  KXOWLEDGEj-MECHANICAL  EFFECTS  PRODUCED  BY  MAN 
ON  THE  SURFACE  OF  THE  EARTH — IMPORTANCE  AND  POSSIBILITY  OF  PHYS 
ICAL  RESTORATION STABILITY  OP  NATURE — RESTORATION  OF  DISTURBED 

HARMONIES — DKSTRUCTIVENESS  OF  MAX — PHYSICAL  IMPROVEMENT — HUMAN 
AND  BRUTE  ACTION  COMPARED — FORMS  AND  FORMATIONS  MOST  LIABLE  TO 

PHYSICAL     DEGRADATION— PHYSICAL    DECAY    OF    NEW    COUNTRIES CORRUPT 

INFLUENCE    OF    PRIVATE    CORPORATIONS,    note. 

Natural  Advantages  of  the  Territory  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

THE  Roman  Empire,  at  the  period  of  its  greatest  expansion, 
comprised  the  regions  of  the  earth  most  distinguished  by  a 
happy  combination  of  physical  advantages.  The  provinces 
bordering  on  the  principal  and  the  secondary  basins  of  the 
Mediterranean  enjoyed  a  healthfulness  and  an  equability  of 
climate,  a  fertility  of  soil,  a  variety  of  vegetable  and  mineral 
products,  and  natural  facilities  for  the  transportation  and  dis 
tribution  of  exchangeable  commodities,  which  have  not  been 
^possessed  in  an  equal  degree  by  any  territory  of  like  extent 
in  the  Old  World  or  the  New.  The  abundance  of  the  land  and 
of  the  waters  adequately  supplied  every  material  want,  minis 
tered  liberally  to  every  sensuous  enjoyment.  Gold  and  silver, 
indeed,  were  riot  found  in  the  profusion  which  has  proved  so 
baneful  to  the  industry  of  lands  richer  in  veins  of  the  precious 
1 


HOMAN   EMPIRE. 


metals;  but  mines  and  riverbeds  yielded  them  in 
measure  most  favorable  to  stability  of  value  in  the  medium  of 
exchange,  and,  consequently,  to  the  regularity  of  commercial 
transactions.  The  ornaments  of  the  barbaric  pride  of  the 
East,  the  pearl,  the  ruby,  the  sapphire,  and  the  diamond- 
though  not  unknown  to  the  luxury  of  a  people  whose  con 
quests  and  whose  wealth  commanded  whatever  the  habitable 
world  could  contribute  to  augment  the  material  splendor  of 
their  social  life  —  were  scarcely  native  to  the  territory  of  the 
empire  ;  but  the  comparative  rarity  of  these  gems  in  Europe, 
at  somewhat  earlier  periods,  was,  perhaps,  the  very  circum 
stance  that  led  the  cunning  artists  of  classic  antiquity  to 
enrich  softer  stones  with  engravings,  which  invest  the  common 
onyx  and  carnelian  with  a  worth  surpassing,  in  cultivated 
eyes,  the  lustre  of  the  most  brilliant  oriental  jewels. 

Of  these  manifold  blessings  the  temperature  of  the  air,  the 
distribution  of  the  rains,  the  relative  disposition  of  land  and 
water,  the  plenty  of  the  sea,  the  composition  of  the  soil,  and 
the  raw  material  of  some  of  the  arts,  were  wholly  gratuitous 
gifts.  Yet  the  spontaneous  nature  of  Europe,  of  "Western 
Asia,  of  Libya,  neither  fed  nor  clothed  the  civilized  inhabitants 
of  those  provinces.  Every  loaf  was  eaten  in  the  sweat  of  the 
brow.  All  must  be  earned  by  toil.  But  toil  was  nowhere 
else  rewarded  by  so  generous  wages  ;  for  nowhere  would  a 
given  amount  of  intelligent  labor  produce  so  abundant,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  so  varied  returns  of  the  good  things  of  material 
existence.  The  luxuriant  harvests  of  cereals  that  waved  on 
every  field  from  the  shores  of  the  Bhine  to  the  banks  of  the 
Nile,  the  vines  that  festooned  the  hillsides  of  Syria,  of  Italy 
and  of  Greece,  the  olives  of  Spain,  the  fruits  of  the  gardens  of 
the  Hesperides,  the  domestic  quadrupeds  and  fowls  known  in 
ancient  rural  husbandry  —  all  these  were  original  products  of 
foreign  climes,  naturalized  in  new  homes,  and  gradually  enno 
bled  by  the  art  of  man,  while  centuries  of  persevering  labor 
were  expelling  the  wild  vegetation,  and  fitting  the  earth  for 
the  production  of  more  generous  growths, 

Only  for  the  sense  of  landscape  beauty  did  unaided  nature 


PHYSICAL   DECAY   OF   ROMAN   PROVINCES. 

make  provision.  Indeed,  the  very  commonness  of  this  source 
of  refined  enjoyment  seems  to  have  deprived  it  of  half  its 
value ;  and  it  was  only  in  the  infancy  of  lands  where  all  the 
earth  was  fair,  that  Greek  and  Roman  humanity  had  sym 
pathy  enough  with  the  inanimate  world  to  be  alive  to  the 
charms  of  rural  and  of  mountain  scenery.  In  later  genera 
tions,  when  the  glories  of  the  landscape  had  been  heightened 
by  plantation,  and  decorative  architecture,  and  other  forms  of 
picturesque  improvement,  the  poets  of  Greece  and  Rome  were 
blinded  by  excess  of  light,  and  became,  at  last,  almost  insensi 
ble  to  beauties  that  now,  even  in  their  degraded  state,  enchant 
every  eye,  except,  too  often,  those  which  a  lifelong  familiarity 
has  dulled  to  their  attractions. 


Physical  Decay  of  the  Territory  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and 
of  other  parts  of  the  Old  World. 

If  we  compare  the  present  physical  condition  of  the  coun 
tries  of  which  I  am  speaking,  with  the  descriptions  that  ancient 
historians  and  geographers  have  given  of  their  fertility  and 
general  capability  of  ministering  to  human  uses,  we  shall  find 
that  more  than  one  half  of  their  whole  extent — including  the 
provinces  most  celebrated  for  the  profusion  and  variety  of 
their  spontaneous  and  their  cultivated  products,  and  for  the 
wealth  and  social  advancement  of  their  inhabitants — is  either 
deserted  by  civilized  man  and  surrendered  to  hopeless  desola 
tion,  or  at  least  greatly  reduced  in  both  productiveness  and 
population.  Yast  forests  have  disappeared  from  mountain 
spurs  and  ridges  ;  the  vegetable  earth  accumulated  beneath  the 
trees  by  the  decay  of  leaves  and  fallen  trunks,  the  soil  of  the 
alpine  pastures  which  skirted  and  indented  the  woods,  and  the 
mould  of  the  upland  fields,  are  washed  away  ;  meadows,  once 
fertilized  by  irrigation,  are  waste  and  unproductive,  because 
the  cisterns  and  reservoirs  that  supplied  the  ancient  canals  are 
broken,  or  the  springs  that  fed  them  dried  up  ;  rivers  famous 
in  history  and  song  have  shrunk  to  humble  brooklets ;  the 
willows  that  ornamented  and  protected  the  banks  of  the  lesser 


4.  PHYSICAL   DECAY   OF   EOMAN   PROVINCES. 

watercourses  are  gone,  and  the  rivulets  have  ceased  to  exist  aa 
perennial  currents,  because  the  little  water  that  finds  its  way 
into  their  old  channels  is  evaporated  by  the  droughts  of  sum 
mer,  or  absorbed  by  the  parched  earth,  before  it  reaches  the 
lowlands ;  the  beds  of  the  brooks  have  widened  into  broad 
expanses  of  pebbles  arid  gravel,  over  which,  though  in  the  hot 
season  passed  dryshod,  in  winter  sealike  torrents  thunder; 
the  entrances  of  navigable  streams  are  obstructed  by  sand 
bars,  and  harbors,  once  marts  of  an  extensive  commerce,  are 
shoaled  by  the  deposits  of  the  rivers  at  whose  mouths  they 
lie ;  the  elevation  of  the  beds  of  estuaries,  and  the  conse 
quently  diminished  velocity  of  the  streams  which  flow  into 
them,  have  converted  thousands  of  leagues  of  shallow  sea  and 
fertile  lowland  into  unproductive  and  miasmatic  morasses. 

Besides  the  direct  testimony  of  history  to  the  ancient  fer 
tility  of  the  regions  to  which  I  refer — Northern  Africa,  the 
greater  Arabian  peninsula,  Syria,  Mesopotamia,  Armenia  and 
many  other  provinces  of  Asia  Minor,  Greece,  Sicily,  and  parts 
of  even  Italy  and  Spain — the  multitude  and  extent  of  yet 
remaining  architectural  ruins,  and  of  decayed  works  of  inter 
nal  improvement,  show  that  at  former  epochs  a  dense  popula 
tion  inhabited  those  now  lonely  districts.  Such  a  population 
could  have  been  sustained  only  by  a  productiveness  of  soil  of 
which  we  at  present  discover  but  slender  traces ;  and  the 
abundance  derived  from  that  fertility  serves  to  explain  how 
large  armies,  like  those  of  the  ancient  Persians,  and  of  the  Cru 
saders  and  the  Tartars  in  later  ages,  could,  without  an  organ 
ized  commmissariat,  secure  adequate  supplies  in  long  marches 
through  territories  which,  in  our  times,  would  scarcely  afford 
forage  for  a  single  regiment. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  fairest  and  fruitfulest  provinces 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  precisely  that  portion  of  terrestriat  sur 
face,  in  short,  which,  about  the  commencement  of  the  Chris 
tian  era,  was  endowed  with  the  greatest  superiority  of  soil, 
climate,  and  position,  which  had  been  carried  to  the  highest 
pitch  of  physical  improvement,  and  which  thus  combined  the 
natural  and  artificial  conditions  best  fitting  it  for  the  habita- 


CAUSES   OF   PHYSICAL   DECAY.  5 

tion  and  enjoyment  of  a  dense  and  highly  refined  and  cultivated 
population,  is  now  completely  exhausted  of  its  fertility,  or  s.o 
diminished  in  productiveness,  as,  with  the  exception  of  a  ^lew 
favored  oases  that  have  escaped  the  general  ruin,  to  be  inr> 
longer  capable  of  affording  sustenance  to  civilized  man.  If 
to  this  realm  of  desolation  we  add  the  now  wasted  and  soli 
tary  soils  of  Persia  and  the  remoter  East,  that  once  fed  their 
millions  with  milk  and  honey,  we  shall  see  that  a  territory 
larger  than  all  Europe,  the  abundance  of  which  sustained  in 
bygone  centuries  a  population  scarcely  inferior  to  that  of  the 
whole  Christian  world  at  the  present  day,  has  been  entirely 
withdrawn  from  human  use,  or,  at  best,  is  thinly  inhabited  by 
tribes  too  few  in  numbers,  too  poor  in  superfluous  products, 
and  too  little  advanced  in  culture  and  the  social  arts,  to  con 
tribute  anything  to  the  general  moral  or  material  interests  of 
the  great  commonwealth  of  man. 

Causes  of  this  Decay. 

The  decay  of  these  once  flourishing  countries  is  partly  due, 
no  doubt,  to  that  class  of  geological  causes,  whose  action  we 
can  neither  resist  nor  guide,  and  partly  also  to  the  direct  vio 
lence  of  hostile  human  force  ;  but  it  is,  in  a  far  greater  propor 
tion,  either  the  result  of  man's  ignorant  disregard  of  the  laws 
of  nature,  or  an  incidental  consequence  of  war,  and  of  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  and  misrule.  Next  to  ignorance  of  these 
laws,  the  primitive  source,  the  causa  causarum,  of  the  acts  arid 
neglects  which  have  blasted  with  sterility  and  physical  decrepi 
tude  the  noblest  half  of  the  empire  of  the  Caesars,  is,  first,  the 
brutal  and  exhausting  despotism  which  Home  herself  exercised 
over  her  conquered  kingdoms,  and  even  over  her  Italian  terri 
tory  ;  then,  the  host  of  temporal  and  spiritual  tyrannies  which 
she  left  as  her  dying  curse  to  all  her  wide  dominion,  and 
which,  in  some  form  of  violence  or  of  fraud,  still  brood  over 
almost  every  soil  subdued  by  the  Eoman  legions.*  Man  can- 

*  In  the  Middle  Ages,  feudalism,  and  a  nominal  Christianity  whoso 
corruptions  had  converted  the  most  beneficent  of  religions  into  the  most 


6  CAUSES  OF  PHYSICAL  DECAY. 

not  struggle  at  once  against  human  oppression  and  the 
destructive  forces  of  inorganic  nature.  When  both  are  eom- 
b/ned  against  him,  he  succumbs  after  a  shorter  or  a  longer 
Bt*v  toggle,  and  the  fields  he  has  won  from  the  primeval  wood 
relapse  into  their  original  state  of  wild  and  luxuriant,  but 

baneful  of  superstitions,  perpetuated  every  abuse  of  Roman  tyranny,  and 
*  added  new  oppressions  and  new  methods  of  extortion  to  those  invented 
by  older  despotisms.  The  burder.s  in  question  fell  most  heavily  on  the 
provinces  that  had  been  longest  colonized  by  the  Latin  race,  and  these  are 
the  portions  of  Europe  which  have  suffered  the  greatest  physical  degra 
dation.  "  Feudalism,"  says  Blanqui,  "  was  a  concentration  of  scourges. 
Tae  peasant,  stripped  of  the  inheritance  of  his  fathers,  became  the  prop 
erty  of  inflexible,  ignorant,  indolent  masters ;  he  was  obliged  to  travel 
fifty  leagues  with  their  carts  whenever  they  required  it ;  he  labored  for 
them  three  days  in  the  week,  and  surrendered  to  them  half  the  product 
of  his  earnings  during  the  other  three ;  without  their  consent  he  could 
not  change  his  residence,  or  marry.  And  why,  indeed,  should  he  wish  to 
marry,  when  he  could  scarcely  save  enough  to  maintain  himself?  The 
Abbot  Alcuin  had  twenty  thousand  slaves,  called  serfs,  who  were  forever 
attached  to  the  soil.  This  is  the  great  cause  of  the  rapid  depopulation  ob 
served  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  of  the  prodigious  multitude  of  monasteries 
which  sprang  up  on  every  side.  It  was  doubtless  a  relief  to  such  misera 
ble  men  to  find  in  the  cloisters  a  retreat  from  oppression  ;  but  the  human 
race  never  suffered  a  more  cruel  outrage,  industry  never  received  a  wound 
better  calculated  to  plunge  the  world  again  into  the  darkness  of  the  rudest 
antiquity.  It  suffices  to  say  that  the  prediction  of  the  approaching  end  of 
the  world,  industriously  spread  by  the  rapacious  monks  at  this  time,  was 
received  without  terror." — Resume  de  VHistoire  du  Commerce,  p.  156. 

The  abbey  of  Saint-Germain-des-Prc's,  which,  in  the  time  of  Charle 
magne,  had  possessed  a  million  of  acres,  was,  down  to  the  Revolution, 
still  so  wealthy,  that  the  personal  income  of  the  abbot  was  300,000  livres. 
The  abbey  of  Saint-Denis  was  nearly  as  rich  as  that  of  Saint-Germain-des- 
Pres. — LAVEKGNE.  Economic  Rurale  de  la  France,  p.  104. 

Paul  Louis  Courier  quotes  from  La  Bruyere  the  following  striking  pic 
ture  of  the  condition  of  the  French  peasantry  in  his  time :  ':  One  sees 
certain  dark,  1  vid.  naked,  sunburnt,  wild  animals,  male  and  female,  scat 
tered  over  the  country  and  attached  to  the  soil,  which  they  root  and  turn 
over  with  indom'table  perseverance.  They  have,  as  it  were,  an  articulate 
voice  and  when  they  rise  to  their  feet,  they  show  a  human  face.  They 
are,  in  fact,  men  ;  they  creep  at  night  into  dens,  where  they  live  on  black 
bread,  water,  and  roots.  They  spare  other  men  the  labor  of  ploughing. 


ROMAN    OPPRESSION.  7 

unprofitable  forest  growth,  or  fall  into  that  of  a  dry  and  bar 
ren  wilderness. 

Eonie  imposed  on  the  products  of  agricultural  labor  ia/tho 
rural  districts  taxes  which  the  sale  of  the  entire  harvest  would 
scarcely  discharge ;  she  drained  them  of  their  population  by 
military  conscription ;  she  impoverished  the  peasantry  by 
forced  and  unpaid  labor  on  public  works ;  she  hampered 
industry  and  internal  commerce  by  absurd  restrictions  and 
unwise  regulations.  Henc:^  large  tracts  of  land  were  left 
uncultivated,  or  altogether  deserted,  and  exposed  to  all  the 
destructive  forces  which  act  with  such  energy  on  the  surface 
of  the  earth  when  it  is  deprived  of  those  protections  by  which 
nature  originally  guarded  it,  and  for  which,  in  well-ordered 
husbandry,  human  ingenuity  has  contrived  more  or  less  effi 
cient  substitutes.*  Similar  abuses  have  tended  to  perpetuate 
and  extend  these  evils  in  later  ages,  and  it  is  but  recently  that, 
even  in  the  most  populous  parts  of  Europe,  public  attention 

sowing,  and  harvesting,  and  therefore  deserve  some  small  share  of  the 
bread  they  have  grown."  "These  are  his  own  words,"  adds  Courier; 
"  he  is  speaking  of  the  fortunate  peasants,  of  those  who  had  work  and 
bread,  and  they  were  then  the  few." — Petition  d  la  Chambre  des  Deputts 
.pour  les  Villagcois  que  Von  empeche  de  danger. 

Arthur  Young,  who  travelled  in  France  from  1787  to  1789,  gives,  in 
the  twenty-first  chapter  of  his  Travels,  a  frightful  account  of  the  burdens 
of  the  rural  population  even  at  that  late  period.  Besides  the  regular 
governmental  taxes,  and  a  multitude  of  heavy  fines  imposed  for  trifling 
offences,  he  enumerates  about  thirty  seignorial  rights,  the  very  origin  and 
nature  of  some  of  which  are  now  unknown,  while  those  of  some  others, 
claimed  and  enforced  by  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  by  temporal  lords,  are  as 
repulsive  to  humanity  and  morality,  as  the  worst  abuses  ever  practised  by 
heathen  despotism.  Most  of  these,  indeed,  had  been  commuted  for  money 
payments,  and  were  levied  on  the  peasantry  as  pecuniary  imposts  for  the 
benefit  of  prelates  and  lay  lords,  who,  by  virtue  of  their  nobility,  wore 
exempt  from  taxation.  Who  can  wonder  at  the  hostility  of  the  French 
plebeian  classes  toward  the  aristocracy  in  the  days  of  the  Revolution? 

*  The  temporary  depopulation  of  an  exhausted  soil  may  be,  in  some 
cases,  a  physical,  though,  like  fallows  in  agriculture,  a  dear-bought  advan 
tage.  Under  favorable  circumstances,  the  withdrawal  of  man  and  his 
flocks  allows  the  earth  to  clothe  itself  again  with  forests,  and  in  a  few 
generations  to  recover  its  ancient  productiveness.  In  the  Middle  Ages, 


5  PHYSICAL   RESTORATION — MAN   AND   NATURE. 

has  been  half  awakened  to  the  necessity  of  restoring  the  dis 
turbed  harmonies  of  nature,  whose  well-balanced  influences 
are  so  propitious  to  all  her  organic  offspring,  of  repaying  to 
our  great  mother  the  debt  which  the  prodigality  and  the  thrift- 
lessness  of  former  gen  orations  have  imposed  upon  their  succes 
sors — thus  fulfilling  the  command  of  religion  and  of  practical 
wisdom,  to  use  this  world  as  not  abusing  it. 

New  School  of  Geographers. 

The  labors  of  Humboldt,  of  Hitter,  of  Guyot  and  their 
followers,  have  given  to  the  science  of  geography  a  more 
philosophical,  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  more  imaginative  char 
acter  than  it  had  received  from  the  hands  of  their  predecessors. 
Perhaps  the  most  interesting  field  of  speculation,  thrown  open 
by  the  new  school  to  the  cultivators  of  this  attractive  study,  is 
the  inquiry :  how  far  external  physical  conditions,  and  espe 
cially  the  configuration  of  the  earth's  surface,  and  the  distribu 
tion,  outline,  and  relative  position  of  land  and  water,  have 
influenced  the  social  life  and  social  progress  of  man. 

Reaction  of  Man  on  Nature. 

But,  as  we  have  seen,  man  has  reacted  upon  organized  and 
inorganic  nature,  and  thereby  modified,  if  not  determined,  the 
material  structure  of  his  earthly  home.  The  measure  of  that 
reaction  manifestly  constitutes  a  very  important  element  in  the 
appreciation  of  the  relations  between  mind  and  matter,  as  well 
as  in  the  discussion  of  many  purely  physical  problems.  But 
though  the  subject  has  been  incidentally  touched  upon  by 
many  geographers,  and  treated  with  much  fulness  of  detail  in 
regard  to  certain  limited  fields  of  human  effort,  and  to  certain 
specific  effects  of  human  action,  it  has  not,  as  a  whole,  so  far 
as  I  know,  been  made  matter  of  special  observation,  or  of  his- 

worn-out  fields  were  depopulated,  in  many  parts  of  the  Continent,  by  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  tyrannies,  which  insisted  on  the  surrender  of  the  half  of 
a  loaf  already  too  small  to  sustain  its  producer.  Thus  abandoned,  these 
lands  often  relapsed  into  the  forest  state,  and,  some  centuries  later,  were 
again  brought  under  cultivation  with  renovated  fertility. 


NATURE   AND  MAN — WANT   OF  FACTS.  9 

torical  research  by  any  scientific  inquirer.*  Indeed,  until  the 
influence  of  physical  geography  upon  human  life  was  recog 
nized  as  a  distinct  branch  of  philosophical  investigation,  there 
was  no  motive  for  the  pursuit  of  such  speculations  ;  and  it  was 
desirable  to  inquire  whether  we  have  or  can  become  the  archi 
tects  of  our  own  abiding  place,  only  when  it  was  known  how 
the  mode  of  our  physical,  moral,  and  intellectual  being  is 
affected  by  the  character  of  the  home  which  Providence  has 
appointed,  and  we  have  fashioned,  for  our  material  habitation. f 
It  is  still  too  early  to  attempt  scientific  method  in  discuss 
ing  this  problem,  nor  is  our  present  store  of  the  necessary  facts 
by  any  means  complete  enough  to  warrant  me  in  promising 
any  approach  to  fulness  of  statement  respecting  them.  Sys 
tematic  observation  in  relation  to  this  subject  has  hardly  yet 
begun,;f  and  the  scattered  data  which  have  chanced,  to  'be 
recorded  have  never  been  collected.  It  has  now  no  place  in 
the  general  scheme  of  physical  science,  and  is  matter  of  sug- 

*  The  subject  of  climatic  change,  with  and  without  reference  to  human 
action  as  a  cause,  has  heen  much  discussed  by  Moreau  de  Jonnes,  Bureau 
do  la  Malle,  Arago,  Humboldt,  Fuster,  Gasparin,  Becquerel.  and  many 
other  writers'  in  Europe,  and  by  Noah  Webster,  Forry,  Drake,  and  others 
in  America.     JYaas  has  endeavored  to  show,  by  the  history  of  vegetation 
in  Greece,  not  merely  that  clearing  and  cultivation  have  affected  climate, 
but  that  change  of  climate  has  essentially  modified  the  character  of  vege 
table  life.     See  his  Klima  und  Pflarizenwelt  in  der  Zeit. 
t  Gods  Almagt  wenkte  van  den  troon, 
En  schiep  elk  volk  een  land  ter  woon : 
Hier  vestte  Zij  een  grondgebied, 
Dat  Zij  ons  zelven  scheppen  liet. 

1  The  udometric  measurements  of  Belgrand,  reported  in  the  Annales 
Fore-itttres  for  1854,  and  discussed  by  Valleys  in  chap,  vi  of  his  Etudes 
xur  les  Inondations,  constitute  the  earliest,  and,  in  some  respects,  the  most 
remarkable  series  known  to  me,  of  persevering  and  systematic  observa 
tions  bearing  directly  and  exclusively  upon  the  influence  of  human  action 
on  climate,  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  on  precipitation  and  natural 
drainage.  The  conclusions  of  Belgrand,  however,  and  of  Valles,  who 
adopts  them,  have  not  been  generally  accepted  by  the  scientific  world,  and 
they  seem  to  have  been,  in  part  at  least,  refuted  by  the  arguments  of  Heri« 
court  and  the  observations  of  Oantegril,  Jeandel,  and  Belland.  See  chapter 
iii :  The  Woods. 


10  SELF-TEACHING. 

gestion  and  speculation  only,  not  of  established  and  positive 
conclusion.  At  present,  then,  all  that  I  can  hope  is  to  excite 
an  interest  in  a  topic  of  much  economical  importance,  by 
pointing  out  the  directions  and  illustrating  the  modes  in 
which  human  action  has  been  or  may  be  most  injurious  or 
most  beneficial  in  its  influence  upon  the  physical  conditions  of 
the  earth  we  inhabit. 

Observation  of  Nature. 

In  these  pages,  as  in  all  I  have  ever  written  or  propose  to 
write,  it  is  my  aim  to  stimulate,  not  to  satisfy, curiosity,  and  it 
is  no  part  of  my  object  to  save  my  readers  the  labor  of  obser 
vation  or  of  thought.  For  labor  is  life,  and 

Death  lives  where  power  lives  unused.* 

Self  is  the  schoolmaster  whose  lessons  are  best  worth  his 
wages ;  and  since  the  subject  I  am  considering  has  not  yet 
become  a  branch  of  formal  instruction,  those  whom  it  may 
interest  can,  fortunately,  have  no  pedagogue  but  themselves. 
To  the  natural  philosopher,  the  descriptive  poet,  the  painter, 
and  the  sculptor,  as  well  as  to  the  common  observer,  the  power 
most  important  to  cultivate,  and,  at  the  same  time,  hardest  to 
acquire,  is  that  of  seeing  what  is  before  him.  Sight  is  a  fac 
ulty  ;  seeing,  an  art.  The  eye  is  a  physical,  but  not  a  self- 
acting  apparatus,  and  in  general  it  sees  only  what  it  seeks. 
Like  a  mirror,  it  reflects  objects  presented  to  it ;  but  it  may  be 
as  insensible  as  a  mirror,  and  it  does  not  necessarily  perceive 
what  it  reflects. f  It  is  disputed  whether  the  purely  material 

*  Verses  addressed  by  G.  C  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh.— HAKLUYT,  i,  p.  668. 

f I  troer,  at  Synets  Sands  er  lagt  i  diet, 

Hens  dette  kun  er  Redskab.     Synet  strommer 
Fra  Sjffllens  Dyb,  og  Oiets  fine  Nerver 
Gaae  ud  fra  Hjernens  hemmelige  Vasrksted. 

EENBIE  HERTZ,  Kong  Rene's  Datter,  so.  ii. 
In  the  material  eye,  you  think,  sight  lodgeth  ! 
The  eye  is  but  an  organ.     Seeing  streameth 
From  the  soul's  inmost  depths.     The  fine  perceptive 
Nerve  springeth  from  the  brain's  mysterious  workshop. 


CULTIVATION    OF   THE   EYE.  11 

sensibility  of  the  eye  is  capable  of  improvement  and  cultiva 
tion.  It  has  been  maintained  by  high  authority,  that  the  nat 
ural  acuteness  of  none  of  our  sensuous  faculties  can  be  height 
ened  by  use,  and  hence  that  the  minutest  details  of  the  image 
formed  on  the  retina  are  as  perfect  in  the  most  untrained,  as 
in  the  most  thoroughly  disciplined  organ.  This  may  well  b& 
doubted,  and  it  is  agreed  on  all  hands  that  the  power  of  multi 
farious  perception  and  rapid  discrimination  may  be  immensely 
increased  by  well-directed  practice.*  jPhis  exercise  of  the  eye 

*  Skill  in  marksmanship,  whether  with  firearms  or  with  other  projec 
tile  weapons,  depends  more  upon  the  training  of  the  eye  than  is  generally 
supposed,  and  I  have  often  found  particularly  good  shots  to  possess  an 
almost  telescopic  vision.  In  the  ordinary  use  of  the  rifle,  the  barrel 
serves  as  a  guide  to  the  eye,  but  there  are  sportsmen  who  fire  with  the 
but  of  the  gun  at  the  hip.  In  this  case,  as  in  the  use  of  the  sling,  the  lasso, 
and  the  bolas,  in  hurling  the  knife  (see  BABINET,  Lectures,  vii,  p.  84),  in 
throwing  the  boomerang,  the  javelin,  or  a  stone,  and  in  the  employment 
of  the  blow  pipe  and  the  bow,  the  movements  of  the  hand  and  arm  are 
guided  by  that  mysterious  sympathy  which  exists  between  the  eye  and 
the  unseeing  organs  of  the  body. 

In  shooting  the  tortoises  of  the  Amazon  and  its  tributaries,  the  Indians 
use  an  arrow  with  a  long  twine  and  a  float  attached  to  it.  Ave-Lallemant 
(Die  Benutzung  der  Palmen  am  Amazonenstrom,  p.  32)  thus  describes  their 
mode  of  aiming:  "As  the  arrow,  if  aimed  directly  at  the  floating  tortoise, 
would  strike  it  at  a  small  angle,  and  glance  from  its  flat  and  wet  shell,  the 
archers  have  a  peculiar  method  of  shooting.  They  are  able  to  calculate 
exactly  their  o\vn  muscular  effort,  the  velocity  of  the  stream,  the  distance 
and  size  of  the  tortoise,  and  they  shoot  the  arrow  directly  up  into  the  air, 
so  that  it  falls  almost  vertically  upon  the  shell  of  the  tortoise,  and  sticks 
in  it."  Analogous  calculations — if  such  physico-mental  operations  can 
properly  be  so  called — are  made  in  the  use  of  other  missiles ;  for  no  projec 
tile  flies  in  a  right  line  to  its  mark.  But  the  exact  training  of  the  eye  lies 
at  the  bottom  of  all  of  them,  and  marksmanship  depends  almost  wholly  upon 
the  power  of  that  organ,  whose  directions  the  blind  muscles  implicitly 
follow.  It  is  perhaps  not  out  of  place  to  observe  here  that  our  English 
word  aim  comes  from  the  Latin  (Estimo,  I  calculate  or  estimate.  See 
•WEDGWOOD'S  Dictionary  of  English  Etymology,  and  the  note  to  the  Amer 
ican  edition, under  Aim. 

Another  proof  of  the  control  of  the  limbs  by  the  eye  has  been  observed 
in  deaf-and-dumb  schools,  and  others  where  pupils  are  first  taught  to  write 
on  large  slates  or  blackboards.  The  writing  is  in  large  characters,  the 


12  STUDY    OF   PHYSICAL   GEOGKAPHY. 

I  desire  to  promote,  and,  next  to  moral  and  religious  doctrine, 
I  know  no  more  important  practical  lessons  in  this  eartlily  life 
of  ours — which,  to  the  wise  man,  is  a  school  from  the  cradle  to 
the  grave — than  those  relating  to  the  employment  of  the  sense 
of  vision  in  the  study  of  nature. 

r  The  pursuit  of  physical  geography,  embracing  actual  obser 
vation  of  terrestrial  surface,  affords  to  the  eye  the  best  general 
training  that  is  accessible  to  all.  The  majority  of  even  culti 
vated  men  have  not  the  time  and  means  of  acquiring  anything 
beyond  a  very  superficial  acquaintance  with  any  branch  of 
physical  knowledge.  Natural  science  has  become  so  vastly 
extended,  its  recorded  facts  and  its  unanswered  questions  so 
immensely  multiplied,  that  every  strictly  scientific  man  must 
be  a  specialist,  and  confine  the  researches  of  a  whole  life  within 
a  comparatively  narrow  circle.  The  study  I  am  recommend 
ing,  in  the  view  I  propose  to  take  of  it,  is  yet  in  that  imper 
fectly  developed  state  which  allows  its  votaries  to  occupy 
themselves  with  such  broad  and  general  views  as  are  attain 
able  by  every  person  of  culture,  and  it  does  not  now  require  a 

small  letters  being  an  inch  or  more  high.  They  are  formed  with  chalk  or 
a  slate  pencil  firmly  grasped  in  the  fingers,  and  by  appropriate  motions  of 
the  wrist,  elbow,  and  shoulder,  not  of  the  finger  joints.  Nevertheless, 
when  a  pen  is  put  into  the  hand  of  a  pupil  thus  taught,  his  handwriting, 
though  produced  by  a  totally  different  set  of  muscles  and  muscular  move 
ments,  is  identical  in  character  with  that  which  he  has  practised  on  the 
blackboard. 

It  has  been  much  doubted  whether  the  artists  of  the  classic  ages  pos 
sessed  a  more  perfect  sight  than  those  of  modern  times,  or  whether,  in  exe 
cuting  their  minute  mosaics  and  gem  engravings,  they  used  magnifiers. 
Glasses  ground  convex  have  been  found  at  Pompeii,  but  they  are  too 
rudely  fashioned  and  too  imperfectly  polished  to  have  been  of  any  prac 
tical  use  for  optical  purposes.  But  though  the  ancient  artists  may  have 
had  a  microscopic  vision,  their  astronomers  cannot  have  had  a  telescopic 
power  of  sight ;  for  they  did  not  discover  the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  which 
are  often  seen  with  the  naked  eye  at  Oormeeah,  in  Persia,  and  sometimes, 
as  I  can  testify  by  personal  observation,  at  Cairo. 

For  a  very  remarkable  account  of  the  restoration  of  vision  impaired 
from  age,  by  judicious  training,  see  Lessons  in  Life,  by  TIMOTHY  TITCOMB, 
lesson  xi. 


GEOLOGICAL   INFLUENCES — INFLUENCE   OF   HUMAN   ACTION.      13 

knowledge  of  special  details  which  only  years  of  application 
can  master.  It  may  be  profitably  pursued  by  all ;  and  every 
traveller,  every  lover  of  rural  scenery,  every  agriculturist,  who 
will  wisely  use  the  gift  of  sight,  may  add  valuable  contribu 
tions  to  the  common  stock  of  knowledge  on  a  subject  which, 
as  I  hope  to  convince  my  readers,  though  long  neglected,  and 
now  inartificially  presented,  is  not  only  a  very  important,  but 
a  very  interesting  field  of  inquiry.  ,, 


Cosmical  and  Geological  Influences. 

The  revolutions  of  the  seasons,  with  their  alternations  of 
temperature  and  of  length  of  day  and  night,  the  climates  of 
different  zones,  and  the  general  condition  and  movements  of 
the  atmosphere  and  the  seas,  depend  upon  causes  for  the  most 
part  cosinical,  and,  of  course,  wholly  beyond  our  control.  The 
elevation,  configuration,  and  composition  of  the  great  masses 
of  terrestrial  surface,  and  the  relative  extent  and  distribution 
of  land  and  water,  are  determined  by  geological  influences 
equallv  remote  from  our  jurisdiction.  It  would  hence  seem 
that  the  physical  adaptation  of  different  portions  of  the  earth 
to  the  use  and  enjoyment  of  man  is  a  matter  so  strictly  belong 
ing  to  mightier  than  human  powers,  that  we  can  only  accept 
geographical  nature  as  we  find  her,  and  be  content  with  such 
soils  and  such  skies  as  she  spontaneously  offers. 

Geographical  Influence  of  Man. 

But  it  is  certain  that  man  has  done  much  to  mould  the 
form  of  the  earth's  surface,  though  we  cannot  always  distin 
guish  between  the  results  of  his  action  and  the  effects  of 
purely  geological  causes  ;  that  the  destruction  of  the  forests, 
the  drainage  of  lakes  and  marshes,  and  the  operations  of  rural 
husbandry  and  industrial  art  have  tended  to  produce  great 
changes  in  the  hygrometric,  thermometric,  electric,  and  chem 
ical  condition  of  the  atmosphere,  though  we  are  not  yet  able  to 
measure  the  force  of  the  different  elements  of  disturbance,  or 


14:  INFLUENCE    OF   HUMAN   ACTION. 

to  say  how  far  they  have  been  compensated  by  each  other,  o! 
by  still  obscurer  influences ;  and,  finally,  that  the  myriad 
forms  of  animal  and  vegetable  life,  which  covered  the  earth 
when  man  first  entered  upon  the  theatre  of  a  nature  whose 
harmonies  he  was  destined  to  derange,  have  been,  through  his 
action,  greatly  changed  in  numerical  proportion,  sometimes 
much  modified  in  form  and  product,  and  sometimes  entirely 
extirpated. 

The  physical  revolutions  thus  wrought  by  man  have  not 
all  been  destructive  to  human  interests.  Soils  to  which  no  » 
nutritions  vegetable  was  indigenous,  countries  which  once 
brought  forth  but  the  fewest  products  suited  for  the  sustenance 
and  comfort  of  man — while  the  severity  of  their  climates  cre 
ated  and  stimulated  the  greatest  number  and  the  most  impe 
rious  urgency  of  physical  wants — surfaces  the  most  rugged 
and  intractable,  and  least  blessed  with  natural  facilities  of  com 
munication,  have  been  made  in  modern  times  to  yield  and 
distribute  all  that  supplies  the  material  necessities,  all  that 
contributes  to  the  sensuous  enjoyments  and  conveniences  of 
civilized  life.  The  Scythia,  the  Thule,  the  Britain,  the  Ger-  - 
many,  and  the  Gaul  which  the  Roman  writers  describe  in  such 
forbidding  terms,  have  been  brought  almost  to  rival  the  native 
luxuriance  and  easily  won  plenty  of  Southern  Italy ;  and, 
while  the  fountains  of  oil  and  wine  that  refreshed  old  Greece 
and  Syria  and  Northern  Africa  have  almost  ceased  to  flow, 
and  the  soils  of  those  fair  lands  are  turned  to  thirsty  and  inhos 
pitable  deserts,  the  hyperborean  regions  of  Europe  have  con 
quered,  or  rather  compensated,  the  rigors  of  climate,  and 
attained  to  a  material  wealth  and  variety  of  product  that, 
with  all  their  natural  advantages,  the  granaries  of  the  ancient 
world  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  enjoyed. 

These  changes  for  evil  and  for  good  have  not  been  caused 
by  great  natural  revolutions  of  the  globe,  nor  are  they  by  any 
means  attributable  wholly  to  the  moral  and  physical  action  or 
inaction  of  the  peoples,  or,  in  all  cases,  even  of  the  races  that 
now  inhabit  these  respective  regions.  They  are  products  of  a 
complication  of  conflicting  or  coincident  forces,  acting  through 


UNCERTAINTY   OF   DATA.  15 

a  long  scries  of  generations ;  here,  improvidence,  wastefulness, 
and  wanton  violence;  there,  foresight  and  wisely  guided  per 
severing  industry.  So  far  as  they  are  purely  the  calculated 
and  desired  results  of  those  simple  and  familiar  operations  of 
agriculture  and  of  social  life  which  are  as  universal  as  civil 
ization — the  removal  of  the  forests  which  covered  the  soil 
required  for  the  cultivation  of  edible  fruits,  the  drying  of  here 
and  there  a  few  acres  too  moist  for  profitable  husbandry,  by 
draining  off  the  surface  waters,  the  substitution  of  domesti 
cated  and  nutritious  for  wild  and  unprofitable  vegetable 
growths,  the  construction  of  roads  and  canals  and  artificial 
harbors — they  belong  to  the  sphere  of  rural,  commercial,  and 
political  economy  more  properly  than  to  geography,  and 
hence  are  but  incidentally  embraced  within  the  range  of  our 
present  inquiries,  which  concern  physical,  not  financial  bal 
ances.  I  propose  to  examine  only  the  greater,  more  perma-./ 
ncnt,  and  more  comprehensive  mutations  which  man  has  proH 
duccd,  and  is  producing,  in  earth,  sea,  and  sky,  sometimes^ 
indeed,  with  conscious  purpose,  but  for  the  most  part,  a|| 
unforeseen  though  natural  consequences  of  acts  performed  for 
narrower  and  more  immediate  ends. 

The  exact  measurement  of  the  geographical  changes  hith 
erto  thus  effected  is,  as  I  have  hinted,  impracticable,  and  we 
possess,  in  relation  to  them,  the  means  of  only  qualitative,  not 
quantitative  analysis.  The  fact  of  such  revolutions  is  estab 
lished  partly  by  historical  evidence,  partly  by  analogical 
deduction  from  effects  produced  in  our  own  time  by  opera 
tions  similar  in  character  to  those  which  must  have  taken 
place  in  more  or  less  remote  ages  of  human  action.  Both 
sources  of  information  are  alike  defective  in  precision  ;  the 
latter,  for  general  reasons  too  obvious  to  require  specification  ; 
the  former,  because  the  facts  to  which  it  bears  testimony 
occurred  before  the  habit  or  the  means  of  rigorously  scientific 
observation  upon  any  branch  of  physical  research,  and  espe 
cially  upon  climatic  changes,  existed. 


16  METEOROLOGY — ANCIENT   HUMAN   KELICS. 

Uncertainty  of  our  Meteorological  Knowledge. 

The  invention  of  measures  of  heat,  and  of  atmospheric 
moisture,  pressure,  and  precipitation,  is  extremely  recent. 
Hence,  ancient  physicists  have  left  us  no  thermornetric  or 
barometric  records,  no  tables  of  the  fall,  evaporation,  and  flow 
of  waters,  and  even  no  accurate  maps  of  coast  lines  and  the 
course  of  rivers.  Their  notices  of  these  phenomena  are  almost 
wholly  confined  to  excessive  and  exceptional  instances  of  high 
or  of  low  temperatures,  extraordinary  falls  of  rain  and  snow, 
and  unusual  floods  or  droughts.  Our  knowledge  of  the, 
'meteorological  condition  of  the  earth,  at  any  period  more  than 
*two  centuries  before  our  own  time,  is  derived  from  these 
•  imperfect  details,  from  the  vague  statements  of  ancient  histo 
rians  and  geographers  in  regard  to  the  volume  of  rivers  and 
the  relative  extent  of  forest  and  cultivated  land,  from  the  indi 
cations  furnished  by  the  history  of  the  agriculture  and  rural 
economy  of  past  generations,  and  from  other  almost  purely 
casual  sources  of  information. 

Among  these  latter  we  must  rank  certain  newly  laid  open 
fields  of  investigation,  from  which  facts  bearing  on  the  point 
now  under  consideration  have  been  'gathered.  I  allude  to  the 
discovery  of  artificial  objects  in  geological  formations  older 
than  any  hitherto  recognized  as  exhibiting  traces  of  the  exist 
ence  of  man  ;  to  the  ancient  lacustrine  habitations  of  Switzer 
land,  containing  the  implements  of  the  occupants,  remains  of 
their  food,  and  other  relics  of  human  life  ;  to  the  curious  reve 
lations  of  the  Kjokkemnoddinger,  or  heaps  of  kitchen  refuse, 
in  Denmark,  and  of  the  peat  mosses  in  the  same  and  other 
northern  countries  ;  to  the  dwellings  and  other  evidences  of 
the  industry  of  man  in  remote  ages  sometimes  laid  bare  by 
the  movement  of  sand  dunes  on  the  coasts  of  France  and  of 
the  North.  Sea  ;  and  to  the  facts  disclosed  on  the  shores  of  the 
latter,  by  excavations  in  inhabited  mounds  which  were,  per 
haps,  raised  before  the  period  of  the  Eoman  Empire.  These 
remains  are  memorials  of  races  which  have  left  no  written 
records,  because  they  perished  before  the  historical  period  of 


ARTS  OF  RUDE  TRIBES.  17 

the  countries  they  occupied  began.  The  plants  and  animals 
that  furnished  the  relics  found  in  the  deposits  were  certainly 
contemporaneous  with  man ;  for  they  are  associated  with  his 
works,  and  have  evidently  served  his  uses.  In  some  cases,  the 
animals  belonged  to  species  well  ascertained  to  be  now  alto 
gether  extinct ;  in  some  others,  both  the  animals  and  the 
vegetables,  though  extant  elsewhere,  have  ceased  to  inhabit 
the  regions  where  their  remains  are  discovered.  From  the 
character  of  the  artificial  objects,  as  compared  with  others 
belonging  to  known  dates,  or  at  least  to  known  periods  of 
civilization,  ingenious  inferences  have  been  drawn  as  to  their 
age ;  and  from  the  vegetation,  remains  of  which  accompany 
them,  as  to  the  climates  of  Central  and  Northern  Europe  at 
the  time  of  their  production. 

There  are,  however,  sources  of  error  which  have  not  always 
been  sufficiently  guarded  against  in  making  these  estimates. 
When  a  boat,  composed  of  several  pieces  of  wood  fastened 
together  by  pins  of  the  same  material,  is  dug  out  of  a  bog,  it 
is  inferred  that  the  vessel,  and  the  skeletons  arid  implements 
found  with  it,  belong  to  an  age  when  the  use  of  iron  was  not 
known  to  the  builders.  But  this  conclusion  is  not  warranted 
by  the  simple  fact  that  metals  were  not  employed  in  its  con 
struction  ;  for  the  Nubians  at  this  day  build  boats  large  enough 
to  carry  half  a  dozen  persons  across  the  Nile,  out  of  small 
pieces  of  acacia  wood  pinned  together  entirely  with  wooden 
bolts.  Nor  is  the  occurrence  of  flint  arrow  heads  and  knives, 
in  conjunction  with  other  evidences  of  human  life,  conclusive 
proof  as  to  the  antiquity  of  the  latter.  Lyell  informs  us  that 
some  Oriental  tribes  still  continue  to  use  the  same  stone  imple 
ments  as  their  ancestors,  "  after  that  mighty  empires,  where 
the  use  of  metals  in  the  arts  Wc^s  well  known,  had  flourished 
for  three  thousand  years  in  their  neighborhood ; "  *  and  the 
North  American  Indians  now  manufacture  and  use  weapons 
of  stone,  and  even  of  glass,  chipping  them  in  the  latter  case 
out  of  the  bottoms  of  thick  bottles,  with  great  facility.f 

*  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  377. 

t  *'  One  of  them  [the  Indians]  seated  himself  near  me,  and  made  from 


18  COMMERCE   OF  EUDE   TRIBES. 

f  We  may  also  be  misled  by  our  ignorance  of  the  commer- 
[  cial  relations  existing  between  savage  tribes.  Extremely  rude 
nations,  in  spite  of  their  jealousies  and  their  perpetual  wars, 
sometimes  contrive  to  exchange  the  products  of  provinces  very 
widely  separated  from  each  other.  The  mounds  of  Ohio  con 
tain  pearls,  thought  to  be  marine,  which  must  have  come  from 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  or  perhaps  even  from  California,  and  the 
knives  and  pipes  found  in  the  same  graves  are  often  formed  of 
far-fetched  material,  that  was  naturally  paid  for  by  some  home 
product  exported  to  the  locality  whence  the  material  was 
derived.  The  art  of  preserving  fish,  flesh,  and  fowl  by  drying 
and  smoking  is  widely  diffused,  and  of  great  antiquity.  The 
Indians  of  Long  Island  Sound  are  said  to  have  carried  on  a 
trade  in  dried  shell  fish  with  tribes  residing  very  far  inland. 
From  the  earliest  ages,  the  inhabitants  of  the  Faroe  and 
Orkney  Islands,  and  of  the  opposite  mainland  coasts,  have 
smoked  wild  fowl  and  other  flesh.  Hence  it  is  possible  that 
the  animal  and  the  vegetable  food,  the  remains  of  which  are 
found  in  the  ancient  deposits  I  am  speaking  of,  may  sometimes 
have  been  brought  from  climates  remote  from  that  where  it 
was  consumed. 

The  most  important,  as  well  as  the  most  trustworthy  con- 

a  fragment  of  quartz,  with  a  simple  piece  of  round  bone,  one  end  of  which 
was  hemispherical,  with  a  small  crease  in  it  (as  if  worn  by  a  thread)  the 
sixteenth  of  an  inch  deep,  an  arrow  head  which  was  very  sharp  and  pier 
cing,  and  such  as  they  use  on  all  their  arrows.  The  skill  and  rapidity  with 
which  it  was  made,  without  a  blow,  but  by  simply  breaking  the  sharp 
edges  with  the  creased  bone  by  the  strength  of  his  hands — for  the  crease 
merely  served  to  prevent  the  instrument  from  slipping,  affording  no  lever 
age — was  remarkable." — Reports  of  Exploration*  and  Surveys  for  Pacific 
Railroad,  vol.  ii,  1855,  Lieut.  BEOKWITII'S  Report,  p.  43. 

It  has  been  said  that  stone  weapons  are  not  found  in  Sicily,  except  in 
certain  caves  half  filled  with  the  skeletons  of  extinct  animals.  If  they 
have  not  been  found  in  that  island  in  more  easily  accessible  localities,  I 
suspect  it  is  because  eyes  familiar  with  such  objects  have  not  sought  for 
them.  In  January,  1854,  I  picked  up  an  arrow  head  of  quartz  in  a  little 
ravine  or  furrow  just  washed  out  by  a  heavy  rain,  in  a  field  near  the 
Simeto.  It  is  rudely  fashioned,  but  its  artificial  character  and  its  special 
purpose  are  quite  unequivocal. 


METEOROLOGY.  19 

elusions  with  respect  to  the  climate  of  ancient  Europe  and 
Asia,  are  those  drawn  from  the  accounts  given  by  the  classical 
writers  of  the  growth  of  cultivated  plants ;  but  these  are  by 
no  means  free  from  uncertainty,  because  we  can  seldom  be 
sure  of  an  identity  of  species,  almost  never  of  an  identity  of 
race  or  variety,  between  vegetables  known  to  the  agriculturists 
of  Greece  and  Rome  and  those -of  modern  times  which  are 
thought  most  nearly  to  resemble  them.  Besides  this,  there  is 
always  room  for  doubt  whether  the  habits  of  plants  long 
grown  in  different  countries  may  not  have  been  so  changed 
by  domestication  that  the  conditions  of  temperature  and 
humidity  which  they  required  twenty  centuries  ago  were 
different  from  those  at  present  demanded  for  their  advan 
tageous  cultivation.* 

*  Probably  no  cultivated  vegetable  affords  so  good  an  opportunity  of  f 
studying  the  laws  of  acclimation  of  plants  as  maize  or  Indian  corn. 
Maize  is  grown  from  the  tropics  to  at  least  lat.  47°  in  Northeastern 
America,  and  farther  north  in  Europe.  Every  t\vo  or  three  degrees  of 
latitude  brings  you  to  a  new  variety,  with  new  climatic  adaptations,  and 
the  capacity  of  the  plant  to  accommodate  itself  to  new  conditions  of  tem 
perature  and  season  seems  almost  unlimited.  "We  may  easily  suppose  a 
variety  of  this  grain,  which  had  become  acclimated  in  still  higher  latitudes, 
to  have  been  lost,  and  in  such  case  the  failure  to  raise  a  crop  from  seed 
brought  from  some  distance  to  the  south  would  not  prove  that  the  climate 
had  become  colder. 

Many  persons  now  living  remember  that,  when  the  common  tomato 
was  first  introduced  into  Northern  New  England,  it  often  failed  to  ripen  ; 
but,  in  the  course  of  a  very  few  years,  it  completely  adapted  itself  to  the 
climate,  and  now  not  only  matures  both  its  fruit  and  its  seeds  with  as 
much  certainty  as  any  cultivated  vegetable,  but  regularly  propagates  itself 
by  self-sown  seed.  Meteorological  observations,  however,  do  not  show 
any  amelioration  of  the  summer  climate  in  those  States  within  that 
period.  See  Appendix,  No.  1. 

Maize  and  the  tomato,  if  not  new  to  human  use,  have  not  been  long 
known  to  civilization,  and  were,  very  probably,  reclaimed  and  domesti 
cated  at  a  much  more  recent  period  than  the  plants  which  form  the  great 
staples  of  agricultural  husbandry  in  Europe  and  Asia.  Is  the  great  power 
of  accomodation  to  climate  possessed  by  them  due  to  this  circumstance  ? 
There  is  some  reason  to  suppose  that  the  character  of  maize  has  been  sen 
sibly  changed  by  cultivation  in  South  America ;  for,  according  to  Poppig, 


20  CLIMATIC   CHANGE. 

Even  if  we  suppose  an  identity  of  species,  of  race,  and  of 
habit  to  be  established  between  a  given  ancient  and  modern 
plant,  the  negative  fact  that  the  latter  will  not  grow  now 
/  where  it  flourished  two  thousand  years  ago  does  not  in  all 
1  cases  prove  a  change  of  climate.  The  same  result  might 
follow  from  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil,*  or  from  a  change  in 
the  quantity  of  moisture  it"  habitually  contains.  After  a  dis 
trict  of  country  has  been  completely  or  even  partially  cleared 
of  its  forest  growth,  and  brought  under  cultivation,  the  drying 
of  the  soil,  under  favorable  circumstances,  goes  on  for  genera 
tions,  perhaps  for  ages.f  In  other  cases,  from  injudicious 

the  ears  of  this  grain  found  in  old  Peruvian  tombs  belong  to  varieties  not 
now  known  in  Peru. — Travels  in  Peru,  chap.  vii. 

*  The  cultivation  of  madder  is  said  to  have  been  introduced  into  Europe 
by  an  Oriental  in  the  year  1V65,  and  it  was  first  planted  in  the  neighbor 
hood  of  Avignon.  Of  course,  it  has  been  grown  in  that  district  for  less 
than  a  century ;  but  upon  soils  where  it  has  been  a  frequent  crop,  it  is 
already  losing  much  of  its  coloring  properties. — LAVEKGNE,  Economic  Ru- 
rale  de  la  France,  pp.  259-291. 

I  believe  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  cultivation  of  madder  in  the  vicinity 
of  Avignon  is  of  recent  introduction  ;  but  it  appears  from  Fuller  and  other 
evidence,  that  this  plant  was  grown  in  Europe  before  the  middle  of  the 
•  seventeenth  century.  The  madder  brought  to  France  from  Persia  may  be 
of  a  different  species,  or,  at  least,  variety.  "  Some  two  years  since,"  says 
,  Fuller,  "  madder  was  sown  by  Sir  Nicholas  Crispe  at  Debtford,  and  I  hope 
will  have  good  success ;  first  because  it  groweth  in  Zeland  in  the  same  (if 
not  a  more  northern)  latitude.  Secondly,  because  wild  madder  grows  here 
in  abundance  ;  and  why  may  nut  tame  madder  if  cicurated  by  art. 
Lastly,  because  as  good  as  any  grew  some  thirty  years  since  at  Barn-Elms, 
in  Surrey,  though  it  quit  not  cost  through  some  error  in  the  first  planter 
thereof,  which  now  we  hope  will  be  rectified." — FULLER,  Worthies  of  Eng 
land,  ii,  pp.  57,  58. 

Perhaps  the  recent  diseases  of  the  olive,  the  vine,  and  the  silkworm — 
the  prevailing  malady  of  which  insect  is  supposed  by  some  to  be  the  effect 
of  an  incipient  decay  of  the  mulberry  tree — may  be,  in  part,  due  to 
changes  produced  in  the  character  of  the  soil  by  exhaustion  through  long 
cultivation. 

t  In  many  parts  of  New  England  there  are  tracts,  miles  in  extent,  and 
presenting  all  varieties  of  surface  and  exposure,  which  were  partially  cleared 
sixty  or  seventy  years  ago,  and  where  little  or  no  change  in  the  proportion 
of  cultivated  ground,  pasturage,  and  woodland  has  taken  place  since.  In 


CLIMATIC   CHANGE.  21 

husbandry,  or  the  diversion  or  choking  up  of  natural  water 
courses,  it  may  become  more  highly  charged  with  humidity. 
An  increase  or  diminution  of  the  moisture  of  a  soil  almost 
necessarily  supposes  an  elevation  or  a  depression  of  its  winter 
or  its  summer  heat,  and  of  its  extreme,  if  not  of  its  mean 
annual  temperature,  though  such  elevation  or  depression  may 
be  so  slight  as  not  sensibly  to  raise  or  lower  the  mercury  in  a 
thermometer  exposed  to  the  open  air.  Any  of  these  causes, 
more  or  less  humidity,  or  more  or  less  warmth  of  soil,  would 
affect  the  growth  both  of  wild  and  of  cultivated  vegetation, 
and  consequently,  without  any  appreciable  change  in  atmo 
spheric  temperature,  precipitation,  or  evaporation,  plants  of  a 
particular  species  might  cease  to  be  advantageously  cultivated 
where  they  had  once  been  easily  reared.* 

some  cases,  these  tracts  compose  basins  apparently  scarcely  at  all  exposed 
to  any  local  influence  in  the  way  of  percolation  or  infiltration  of  water 
toward  or  from  neighboring  valleys.  But  in  such  situations,  apart  from 
accidental  disturbances,  the  ground  is  growing  drier  and  drier,  from  year 
to  year,  springs  are  still  disappearing,  and  rivulets  still  diminishing  in  their 
summer  supply  of  water.  A  probable  explanation  of  this  is  to  be  found 
in  the  rapid  drainage  of  the  surface  of  cleared  ground,  which  prevents  the 
subterranean  natural  reservoirs,  whether  cavities  or  merely  strata  of  bib 
ulous  earth,  from  filling  up.  How  long  this  process  is  to  last  before  an 
equilibrium  is  reached,  none  can  say.  It  may  be,  for  years ;  it  may  be,  for 
centuries. 

Livingstone  states  facts  which  favor  the  supposition  that  a  secular 
desiccation  is  still  going  on  in  central  Africa.  When  the  regions  where 
the  earth  is  growing  drier  were  cleared  of  wood,  or,  indeed,  whether 
forests  ever  grew  there,  we  are  unable  to  say,  but  the  change  appears  to 
have  been  long  in  progress.  There  is  reason  to  suspect  a  similar  revolution 
in  Arabia  Petra^a.  In  many  of  the  wadis,  and  particularly  in  the  gorges 
between  Wadi  Feiran  and  Wadi  Esh  Sheikh,  there  are  water-worn  banks 
showing  that,  at  no  very  remote  period,  the  winter  floods  must  have  risen 
fifty  feet  in  channels  where  the  growth  of  acacias  and  tamarisks  and  the 
testimony  of  the  Arabs  concur  to  prove  that  they  have  not  risen  six  feet 
within  the  memory  or  tradition  of  the  present  inhabitants.  There  is  little 
probability  that  any  considerable  part  of  the  Sinaitic  peninsula  has  been 
wooded  since  its  first  occupation  by  man,  and  we  must  seek  the  cause  of 
its  increasing  dryness  elsewhere  than  in  the  removal  of  the  forest. 

*  The  soil  of  newly  subdued  countries  is  generally  in  a  high  degree 


22  UNCERTAINTY  OF  METEOEOLOGY. 

We  are  very  imperfectly  acquainted  with  the  present  tnean 
and  extreme  temperature,  or  the  precipitation  and  the  evap 
oration  of  any  extensive  region,  even  in  countries  most  densely 
peopled  and  best  supplied  with  instruments  and  observers. 
The  progress  of  science  is  constantly  detecting  errors  of  method 
in  older  observations,  and  many  laboriously  constructed  tables 
of  meteorological  phenomena  are  now  thrown  aside  as  falla 
cious,  and  therefore  worse  than  useless,  because  some  condition 
necessary  to  secure  accuracy  of  result  was  neglected,  in  obtain 
ing  the  data  on  which  they  were  founded. 

To  take  a  familiar  instance  :  it  is  but  recently  that  atten 
tion  has  been  drawn  to  the  great  influence  of  slight  changes  of 

favorable  to  the  growth  of  the  fruits  of  the  garden  and  the  orchard,  but 
usually  becomes  much  less  so  in  a  very  few  years.  Plums,  of  many  varie 
ties,  were  formerly  grown,  in  great  perfection  and  abundance,  in  many 
parts  of  New  England  where  at  present  they  can  scarcely  be  reared  at  all ; 
and  the  peach,  which,  a  generation  or  two  ago,  succeeded  admirably  in  the 
southern  portion  of  the  same  States,  has  almost  ceased  to  be  cultivated 
there.  The  disappearance  of  these  fruits  is  partly  due  to  the  ravages  of 
insects,  which  have  in  later  years  attacked  them  ;  but  this  is  evidently  by 
no  means  the  sole,  or  even  the  principal  cause  of  their  decay.  In  these 
cases,  it  is  not  to  the  exhaustion  of  the  particular  acres  on  which  the  fruit 
trees  have  grown  that  we  are  to  ascribe  their  degeneracy,  but  to  a  general 
change  in  the  condition  of  the  soil  or  the  air ;  for  it  is  equally  impossible 
to  rear  them  successfully  on  absolutely  new  land  in  the  neighborhood  of 
grounds  where,  not  long  since,  they  bore  the  finest  fruit. 

I  remember  being  told,  many  years  ago,  by  one  of  the  earliest  settlers 
of  the  State  of  Ohio,  a  very  intelligent  and  observing  person,  that  the 
apple  trees  raised  there  from  seed  sown  soon  after  the  land  was  cleared, 
bore  fruit  in  less  than  half  the  time  required  to  bring  to  bearing,  those 
reared  from  seed  sown  when  the  ground  had  been  twenty  years  under  cul 
tivation. 

In  the  peat  mosses  of  Denmark,  Scotch  firs  and  other  trees  not  now 
growing  in  the  same  localities,  are  found  in  abundance.  Every  generation 
of  trees  leaves  the  soil  in  a  different  state  from  that  in  which  it  found  it ; 
every  tree  that  springs  up  in  a  group  of  trees  of  another  species  than  its 
own,  grows  under  different  influences  of  light  and  shade  and  atmosphere 
from  its  predecessors.  Hence  the  succession  of  crops,  which  occurs  in  all 
natural  forests,  seems  to  be  due  rather  to  changes  of  condition  than  of  cli 
mate.  See  chapter  iii,  post. 


UNCERTAINTY   OF   METEOROLOGY.  23 

station  upon  the  results  of  observations  of  temperature  and 
precipitation.  A  thermometer  removed  but  a  lew  hundred 
yards  from  its  first  position  differs  not  unfrequently  five,  some 
times  even  ten  degrees  in  its  readings  ;  and  when  we  are  told 
that  the  annual  fall  of  rain  on  the  roof  of  the  observatory  at 
Paris  is  two  inches  less  than  on  the  ground  by  the  side  of  it, 
we  may  see  that  the  level  of  the  rain-gauge  is  a  point  of  much 
consequence  in  making  estimates  from  its  measurements.  The 
data  from  which  results  have  been  deduced  with  respect  to 
the  hygrometrical  and  thermometrical  conditions,  the  climate 
in  short,  of  different  countries,  have  very  often  been  derived 
from  observations  at  single  points  in  cities  or  districts  separated 
by  considerable  distances.  The  tendency  of  errors  and  acci 
dents  to  balance  each  other  authorizes  us,  indeed,  to  entertain 
greater  confidence  than  we  could  otherwise  feel  in  the  conclu 
sions  drawn  from  such  tables ;  but  it  is  in  the  highest  degree 
probable  that  they  would  be  much  modified  by  more  numer 
ous  series  of  observations,  at  different  stations  within  narrow 
limits.* 

*  The  nomenclature  of  meteorology  is  vague  and  sometimes  equivocal. 
Not  long  since,  it  was  suspected  that  the  observers  reporting  to  a  scientific 
institution  did  not  agree  in  their  understanding  of  the  mode  of  expressing 
the  direction  of  the  wind  prescribed  by  their  instructions.  It  was  found, 
upon  inquiry,  that  very  many  of  them  used  the  names  of  the  compass- 
points  to  indicate  the  quarter  from  which  the  wind  blew,  while  others 
employed  them  to  signify  the  quarter  toward  which  the  atmospheric  cur 
rents  were  moving.  In  some  instances,  the  observers  were  no  longer 
within  the  reach  of  inquiry,  and  of  course  their  tables  of  the  wind  were  of 
no  value. 

"  "Winds,"  says  Mrs.  SomervWe,  "  are  named  from  the  points  whence 
they  blow,  currents  exactly  the  reverse.  An  easterly  wind  comes  from 
the  east;  whereas  an  easterly  current  comes  from  the  west,  and  flows 
toward  the  east." — Physical  Geography,  p.  229. 

There  is  no  philological  ground  for  this  distinction,  and  it  probably 
originated  in  a  confusion  of  the  terminations  -wardly  and  -erly,  both  of 
which  are  modern.  The  root  of  the  former  ending  implies  the  direction 
to  or  to-ward  which  motion  is  supposed.  It  corresponds  to,  and  is  prob 
ably  allied  with,  the  Latin  versus.  The  termination  -erly  is  a  corruption 
or  softening  of  -ernly,  easterly  for  easternly,  and  many  authors  of  the  sev- 


PRECIPITATION   AND   EVAPORATION. 

There  is  one  branch  of  research  which  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  in  reference  to  these  questions,  but  which,  from 
the  great  difficulty  of  direct  observation  upon  it,  has  been  less 
successfully  studied  than  almost  any  other  problem  of  physi 
cal  science.  I  refer  to  the  proportions  between  precipitation, 
superficial  drainage,  absorption,  and  evaporation.  Precise 
actual  measurement  of  these  quantities  upon  even  a  single  acre 
of  ground  is  impossible  ;  and  in  all  cabinet  experiments  on  the 
subject,  the  conditions  of  the  surface  observed  are  so  different 
from  those  which  occur  in  nature,  that  we  cannot  safely  reason 
from  one  case  to  the  other.  In  nature,  the  inclination  of  the 
ground,  the  degree  of  freedom  or  obstruction  of  the  surface, 
the  composition  and  density  of  the  soil,  upon  which  its  permea 
bility  by  water  and  its  power  of  absorbing  and  retaining  or 
transmitting  moisture  depend,  its  temperature,  the  dryness  or 
saturation  of  the  subsoil,  vary  at  comparatively  short  distances  ; 
and  though  the  precipitation  upon  and  the  superficial  flow 
from  very  small  geographical  basins  may  be  estimated  with  an 

enteenth  century  so  write  it.  In  Hakluyt  (i,  p.  2),  easterly  is  applied  to 
place,  "  easterly  bounds,"  and  means  eastern.  In  a  passage  in  Drayton, 
*•  easterly  winds  "  must  mean  winds  from  the  east ;  but  the  same  author,  in 
speaking  of  nations,  uses  northerly  for  northern.  Hakewell  says:  "The 
sonne  cannot  goe  more  southernely  from  vs,  nor  come  more  northernely 
towards  vs."  Holland,  in  his  translation  of  Pliny,  referring  to  the  raoor 
has:  "  When  shee  is  northerly"  and  "shee  is  gone  southerly."  Richard  - 
son,  to  whom  I  am  indebted  for  the  above  citations,  quotes  a  passage  from 
Dampier  where  westerly  is  applied  to  the  wind,  but  the  context  does  noi 
determine  the  direction.  The  only  example  of  the  termination  in  -wardl** 
given  by  this  lexicographer  is  from  Donne,  where  it  means  toward  the 
west. 

Sliakspeare,  in  Hamlet  (v.  ii),  uses  northerly  wind  for  wind  from  th< 
north.  Milton  does  not  employ  either  of  these  terminations,  nor  were 
they  known  to  the  Anglo-Saxons,  who,  however,  had  adjectives  of  direc 
tion  in  -an  or  -en,  ern  and  -wcard,  the  last  always  meaning  the  point 
toward  which  motion  is  supposed,  the  others  that  from  which  it  pro 
ceeds. 

We  use  an  east  wind,  an  eastern  wind,  and  an  easterly  wind,  to  signify 
the  same  thing.  The  two  former  expressions  are  old,  and  constant  in  mean 
ing  ;  the  last  is  recent,  superfluous,  and  equivocal.  See  Appendix,  No.  2. 


EFFECTS   OF   HUMAN  ACTION   ASCERTAINABLE.  25 

approach  to  precision,  yet  even  here  we  have  no  present  means 
of  knowing  how  much  of  the  water  absorbed  by  the  earth  is 
restored  to  the  atmosphere  by  evaporation,  and  how  much 
carried  olf  by  infiltration  or  other  modes  of  underground 
discharge.  When,  therefore,  v»-e  attempt  to  use  the  phe 
nomena  observed  on  a  few  square  or  cubic  yards  of  earth,  as  a 
basis  of  reasoning  upon  the  meteorology  of  a  province,  it  is 
evident  that  our  data  must  be  insufficient  to  warrant  positive 
general  conclusions.  In  discussing  the  climatology  of  whole 
countries,  or  even  of  comparatively  small  local  divisions,  we 
may  sai'ely  say  that  none  can  tell  what  percentage  of  the 
water  tl\ey  receive  from  the  atmosphere  is  evaporated  ;  what 
absorbed  by  the  ground  and  conveyed  off  by  subterranean 
eondui  ts ;  what  carried  down  to  the  sea  by  superficial  chan 
nels  ;  what  drawn  from  the  earth  or  the  air  by  a  given  extent 
of  forest,  of  short  pasture  vegetation,  or  of  tall  meadow-grass  ; 
wh.at  given  out  again  by  surfaces  so  covered,  or  by  bare 
ground  of  various  textures  and  composition,  under  different 
cq  nditions  of  atmospheric  temperature,  pressure,  and  humid- 
rt-!y  ;  or  what  is  the  amount  of  evaporation  from  water,  ice,  or 
s  now,  under  the  varying  exposures  to  which,  in  actual  nature, 
t  hey  are  constantly  subjected.  If,  then,  we  are  so  ignorant  of 
kill  these,  climatic  phenomena  in  the  best-known  regions  inhab- 
i  ted. by  man,  it  is  evident  that  we  can  rely  little  upon  theo 
retical  deductions  applied  to  the  former  more  natural  state  of 
t  the  same  regions — less  still  to  such  as  are  adopted  with  respect 
*  :o  distant,  strange,  and  primitive  countries. 


Mechanical  Effects  produced  by  Man  on  the  Surface  of  the 
Earth  more  easily  ascertainable. 

In  investigating  the  mechanical  effects  of  human  action  on 
superficial  geography,  WTC  are  treading  on  safer  ground,  and 
dealing  with  much  less  subtile  phenomena,  less  intractable 
elements.  Great  physical  changes  can,  in  some  cases,  be  posi 
tively  shown,  in  some  almost  certainly  inferred,  to  have  been 
produced  by  the  operations  of  rural  industry,  and  by  the  labors 


26  POSSIBILITY   OF   RESTORATION. 

of  man  in  other  spheres  of  material  effort ;  and  hence,  in  this 
most  important  part  of  our  subject,  we  can  arrive  at  many 
positive  generalizations,  and  obtain  practical  results  of  no 
small  economical  value. 


Importance  and  Possibility  of  Physical  Restoration. 

Many  circumstances  conspire  to  invest  with  great  present 
interest  the  questions :  how  far  mi;n  can  permanently  modify 
and  ameliorate  those  physical  conditions  of  terrestrial  surface 
and  climate  on  which  his  material  welfare  ucpeEds  *>  how  far 
he  can  compensate,  arrest,  or  retard  the  deterioration  which 
many  of  his  agricultural  and  industrial  processes  tend  to  pro 
duce  ;  and  how  far  he  can  restore  fertility  and  salubrity  >to  soils 
which  his  follies  or  his  crimes  have  made  barren  or  pestilential. 
Among  these  circumstances,  the  most  prominent,  perhaps,  i 
the  necessity  of  providing  new  homes  for  a  European  popn^a- 
tion  which  is  increasing  more  rapidly  than  its  means  of  subsist 
ence,  new  physical  comforts  for  classes  of  the  people  that  ha  ve 
now  become  too  much  enlightened  and  have  imbibed  to^o 
much  culture  to  submit  to  a  longer  deprivation  of  a  share  in 
the  material  enjoyments  which  the  privileged  ranks  linve  liitP1' 
erto  monopolized. 

To  supply  new  hives  for  the  emigrant  swarms,  there  an  *> 
first,  the  vast  unoccupied  prairies   and  forests  of  America,, 
of  Australia,  and  of  many  other  great  oceanic  islands,  tht^ 
sparsely  inhabited  and  still  unexhausted  soils  of  Southern  anc*-1 
even  Central  Africa,  and,  finally,  the  impoverished  and  half- 
depopulated  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  the  interior  of 
Asia  Minor  and  the  farther  East.     To  furnish  to  those  who 
shall  remain  after  emigration  shall  have  conveniently  reduced 
the   too   dense  population   of  many   European   states,   those 
means  of  sensuous  and  of  intellectual  well-being  which  are 
styled  "  artificial  wants  "  when  demanded  by  the  humble  and 
the  poor,  but  are  admitted  to  be  "  necessaries  "  when  claimed 
by  the  noble  and  the  rich,  the  soil  must  be  stimulated  to  its 
highest  powers  of  production,  and  man's  utmost  ingenuity  and 


STABILITY    OF   NATURE.  27 

energy  must  be  tasked  to  renovate  a  nature  drained,  by  liis 
improvidence,  of  fountains  which  a  wise  economy  would  have 
made  plenteous  and  perennial  sources  of  beauty,  health,  and 
wealth. 

In  those  yet  virgin  lands  which  the  progress  of  modern 
discovery  in  both  hemispheres  has  brought  and  is  still  bring 
ing  to  the  knowledge  and  control  of  civilized  man,  not  much 
improvement  of  great  physical  conditions  is  to  be  looked  for. 
The  proportion  of  forest  is  indeed  to  be  considerably  reduced, 
superfluous  waters  to  be  drawn  off,  and  routes  of  internal 
communication  to  be  constructed  ;  but  the  primitive  geograph 
ical  and  climatic  features  of  these  countries  ought  to  be,  as  far 
as  possible,  retained. 

Stability  of  Nature. 

Mature,  left  undisturbed,  so  fashions  her  territory  as  to  give 
it  almost  unchanging  permanence  of  form,  outline,  and  pro 
portion,  except  when  shattered  by  geologic  convulsions ;  and 
in  these  comparatively  rare  cases  of  derangement,  she  sets 
herself  at  once  to  repair  the  superficial  damage,  and  to  restore, 
as  nearly  as  practicable,  the  former  aspect  of  her  dominion* 
In  new  countries,  the  natural  inclination  of  the  ground,  the 
self-formed  slopes  and  levels,  are  generally  such  as  best  secure 
the  stability  of  the  soil.  They  have  been  graded  and  lowered 
or  elevated  by  frost  and  chemical  forces  and  gravitation  and 
the  flow  of  water  and  vegetable  deposit  and  tho  action  of 
the  winds,  until,  by  a  general  compensation  of  conflicting 
forces,  a  condition  of  equilibrium  has  been  reached  which, 
without  the  action  of  man,  would  remain,  with  little  fluctua 
tion,  for  countless  ages. 

We  need  not  go  far  back  to  reach  a  period  when,  in  all 
that  portion  of  the  North  American  continent  which  has  been 
occupied  by  British  colonization,  the  geographical  elements 
very  nearhr  balanced  and  compensated  each  other.  At  the 
commencement  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  soil,  with 
insignificant  exceptions,  was  covered  with  forests ;  *  and 

*  I  do  not  here  speak  of  the  vast  prairie  region  or  the  Mississippi  val- 


28  AMERICAN   FORESTS. 

whenever  the  Indian,  in  consequence  of  war  or  the  exhaustion 
of  the  beasts  of  the  chase,  abandoned  the  narrow  fields  he  had 
planted  and  the  woods  he  had  burned  over,  they  speedily 
returned, by  a  succession  of  herbaceous,  arborescent,  and  arbo 
real  growths,  to  their  original  state.  Even  a  single  generation 
sufficed  to  restore  them  almost  to  their  primitive  luxuriance 
of  forest  vegetation.*  The  unbroken  forests  had  attained  to 
their  maximum  density  and  strength  of  growth,  and,  as  the 
older  trees  decayed  and  fell,  they  were  succeeded  by  new 
shoots  or  seedlings,  so  that  from  century  to  century  no  per 
ceptible  change  seems  to  have  occurred  in  the  wood,  except 
the  slow,  spontaneous  succession  of  crops.  This  succession 
involved  no  interruption  of  growth,  and  but  little  break  in 
the  "  boundless  contiguity  of  shade ;  "  for,  in  the  husbandry 
of  nature,  there  are  no  fallows.  Trees  fall  singly,  not  by 
square  roods,  and  the  tall  pine  is  hardly  prostrate,  before  the 
light  and  heat,  admitted  to  the  ground  by  the  removal  of  the 
dense  crown  of  foliage  which  had  shut  them  out,  stimulate  the 
germination  of  the  seeds  of  broad-leaved  trees  that  had  lain, 
waiting  this  kindly  influence,  perhaps  for  centuries.  Two 
natural  causes,  destructive  in  character,  were,  indeed,  in 
operation  in  the  primitive  American  forests,  though,  in  the 
Northern  colonies,  at  least,  there  were  sufficient  compensa 
tions  ;  for  we  do  not  discover  that  any  considerable  permanent 
change  was  produced  by  them.  I  refer  to  the  action  of 

ley,  which  cannot  properly  be  said  ever  to  have  been  a  field  of  British 
colonization ;  but  of  the  original  colonies,  and  their  dependencies  in  the 
territory  of  the  present  United  States,  and  in  Canada.  It  is,  however, 
equally  true  of  the  Western  prairies  as  of  the  Eastern  forest  land,  that  they 
had  arrived  at  a  state  of  equilibrium,  though  under  very  different  condi 
tions. 

*  The  great  fire  of  Miramichi  in  1825,  probably  the  most  extensive  and 
terrific  conflagration  recorded  in  authentic  history,  spread  its  ravages  over 
nearly  six  thousand  square  miles,  chiefly  of  woodland,  and  was  of  such 
intensity  that  it  seemed  to  consume  the  very  soil  itself.  But  so  great  are 
the  recuperative  powers  of  nature,  that,  in  twenty-five  years,  the  ground 
was  thickly  covered  again  with  trees  of  fair  dimensions,  except  where  cul 
tivation  and  pasturage  kept  down  the  forest  growth. 


AMERICA!*   FORESTS.  29 

Leavers  and  of  fallen  trees  in  producing  bogs,*  and  of  sinallei 
animals,  insects,  and  birds,  in  destroying  the  woods.  Bogs 
are  less  numerous  and  extensive  in  the  Northern  States  of  the 
American  union,  because  the  natural  inclination  of  the  surface 
favors  drainage  ;  but  they  are  more  frequent,  and  cover  more 
ground,  in  the  Southern  States,  for  the  opposite  reason.-)1 

*  The  English  nomenclature  of  this  geographical  feature  does  not  seem 
well  settled.  We  have  bog,  swamp,  marsh,  morass,  moor,  fen,  turf  moss, 
peat  motis,  quagmire,  all  of  which,  though  sometimes  more  or  less  accu 
ratelj  discriminated,  are  ofren  used  interchangeably,  or  a;e  perhaps  em 
ployed,  each  exclusively,  in  a  particular  district.  In  Sweden,  where, 
especially  in  the  Lappish  provinces,  this  terr-aqneous  formation  is  very  ex 
tensive  and  important,  the  names  of  its  different  kinds  are  more  specific 
in  their  application.  The  general  designation  of  all  soils  permanently 
pervaded  with  water  is  Karr.  The  elder  Lrestadius  divides  the  Karr 
into  two  genera :  Myror  (sing,  myra),  and  Mossar  (sing,  mouse).  "  The 
former,"  he  observes,  ';are  grass-grown,  and  overflowed  with  water 
through  almost  the  whole  summer ;  the  latter  are  covered  with  mosses 
and  always  moist,  but  very  seldom  overflowed."  He  enumerates  the 
following  species  of  Myra,  the  character  of  which  will  perhaps  be  suffi 
ciently  understood  by  the  Latin  terms  into  which  he  translates  the  ver 
nacular  names,  for  the  benefit  of  strangers  not  altogether  familiar  with  the 
language  and  the  subject :  1.  Homyror,  paludes  graminosse.  2.  Dy,  pa- 
ludes  profunda3.  3.  Flarkmyror,  or  proper  Mrr,  paludes  limosas.  4. 
Fjallmyror,  paludes  uliginosse.  5.  Tiifmyror,  paludes  ceespitosae.  6.  Itis- 
myror,  paludes  virgatao.  7.  Starrangar,  prata  irrigata,  with  their  subdi 
visions,  dry  starrdngar  or  risdngar,  wet  starrangar  and  frakengropar.  8. 
Polar,  lacunae.  9.  Gdlar,  fossaa  inundatce.  The  Mossar,  paludes  turfosae, 
which  are  of  great  extent,  have  but  two  species:  1.  Torfmossar,  called 
also  Mossmyror  and  Snottermyror,  and,  2.  JBjornmossar. 

The  accumulations  of  stagnant  or  stagnating  water  originating  in  bogs 
are  distinguished  into  Traslt,  stagna,  and  Tjernar  or  Tjdrnar  (sing.  Tjern 
or  Tjdrji),  stagnatiles.  Trash  are  pools  fed  by  bogs,  or  water  emanating 
from  them,  and  their  bottoms  are  slimy  ;  Tjernar  are  small  Trask  situated 
within  the  limits  of  Mossar. — L.  L.  L^ESTADIUS,  om  Mdjligheten  af  Uppod* 
lingar  i  LappmarJcen,  pp.  23,  24. 

t  Although  the  quantity  of  bog  land  in  New  England  is  less  than  in 
many  other  regions  of  equal  area,  yet  there  is  a  considerable  extent  of  this 
formation  in  some  of  the  Northeastern  States.  Dana  (Manual  of  Geology, 
p.  614)  states  that  the  quantity  of  peat  in  Massachusetts  is  estimated  at 
120,000,000  cords,  or  nearly  569,000,000  cubic  yards,  but  he  does  not  give 


30  FORMATION   OF  BOGS. 

They  generally  originate  in  the  checking  of  watercourses  by 
the  falling  of  timber,  or  of  earth  and  rocks,  across  their  chan 
nels.  If  the  impediment  thus  created  is  sufficient  to  retain  a 
permanent  accumulation  of  water  behind  it,  the  trees  whose 
roots  are  overflowed  soon  perish,  and  then  by  their  fall 
increase  the  obstruction,  and,  of  course,  occasion  a  still  wider 
spread  of  the  stagnating  stream.  This  process  goes  on  until 
the  water  finds  a  new  outlet,  at  a  higher  level,  not  liable  to 
similar  interruption.  The  fallen  trees  not  completely  covered 
by  water  are  soon  overgrown  with  mosses ;  aquatic  and  semi- 
aquatic  plants  propagate  themselves,  and  spread  until  they 
more  or  less  completely  fill  up  the  space  occupied  by  the 
water,  and  the  surface  is  gradually  converted  from  a  pond  to  a 
quaking  morass.*  The  morass  is  slowly  solidified  by  vegetable 

either  the  area  or  the  depth  of  the  deposits.  In  any  event,  however,  bogs 
cover  but  a  small  percentage  of  the  territory  in  any  of  the  Northern  States, 
while  it  is  said  that  one  tenth  of  the  whole  surface  of  Ireland  is  composed 
of  bogs,  and  there  are  still  extensive  tracts  of  undrained  marsh  in  England. 

Bogs,  independently  of  their  importance  in  geology  as  explaining  the 
origin  of  some  kinds  of  mineral  coal,  have  a  present  value  as  repositories 
of  fuel.  Peat  beds  have  sometimes  a  thickness  of  ten  or  twelve  yards,  or 
even  more.  A  depth  of  ten  yards  would  give  48,000  cubic  yards  to  the 
acre.  The  greatest  quantity  of  firewood  yielded  by  the  forests  of  New 
England  to  the  acre  is  100  cords  solid  measure,  or  474  cubic  yards ;  but 
this  comprises  only  the  trunks  and  larger  branches.  If  we  add  the  small 
branches  and  twigs,  it  is  possible  that  600  cubic  yards  might,  in  some  cases, 
be  cut  on  an  acre.  This  is  only  one  eightieth  part  of  the  quantity  of 
peat  sometimes  found  on  the  same  area.  It  is  true  that  a  yard  of  peat  and 
a  yard  of  wood  are  not  the  equivalents  of  each  other,  but  the  fuel  on  an 
acre  of  deep  peat  is  worth  much  more  than  that  on  an  acre  of  the  best 
woodland.  Besides  this,  wood  is  perishable,  and  the  quantity  on  an  acre 
cannot  be  increased  beyond  the  amount  just  stated ;  peat  is  indestructible, 
and  the  beds  are  always  growing. 

*  "  Aquatic  plants  have  a  utility  in  raising  the  level  of  marshy  grounds, 
which  renders  them  very  valuable,  and  may  well  be  called  a  geological 
function.  *  *  * 

"  The  engineer  drains  ponds  at  a  great  expense  by  lowering  the  surface 
of  the  water ;  nature  attains  the  same  end,  gratuitously,  by  raising  the 
level  of  the  soil  without  depressing  that  of  the  water ;  but  she  proceeds 
more  slowly  There  are,  in  the  Landes,  marshes  where  this  natural  filling 


BEATER  DAMS — FORMATION   OF  BOGS.  31 

production  and  deposit,  then  very  often  restored  to  the  forest 
condition  by  the  growth  of  black  ashes,  cedars,  or,  in  southern 
latitudes,  cypresses,  and  other  trees  suited  to  such  a  soil,  and 
thus  the  interrupted  harmony  of  nature  is  at  last  reestablished. 

I  am  disposed  to  think  that  more  bogs  in  the  ^Northern 
States  o\ve  their  origin  to  beavers  than  to  accidental  obstruc 
tions  of  rivulets  by  wind-fallen  or  naturally  decayed  trees  ;  for 
there  are  few  swamps  in  those  States,  at  the  outlets  of  which 
we  may  not,  by  careful  search,  find  the  remains  of  a  beaver 
dam.  The  beaver  sometimes  inhabits  natural  lakelets,  but  he 
prefers  to  owe  his  pond  to  his  own  ingenuity  and  toil.  The 
reservoir  once  constructed,  its  inhabitants  rapidly  multiply, 
and  as  its  harvests  of  pond  lilies,  and  other  aquatic  plants  on 
which  this  quadruped  feeds  in  winter,  become  too  small  for 
the  growing  population,  the  beaver  metropolis  sends  out 
expeditions  of  discovery  and  colonization.  The  pond  grad 
ually  fills  up,  by  the  operation  of  the  same  causes  as  when  it 
owes  its  existence  to  an  accidental  obstruction,  and  when,  at 
last,  the  original  settlement  is  converted  into  a  bog  by  the 
usual  processes  of  vegetable  life,  the  remaining  inhabitants 
abandon  it  and  build  on  some  virgin  brooklet  a  new  city  of 
the  waters. 

In  countries  somewhat  further  advanced  in  civilization 
than  those  occupied  by  the  JS"orth  American  Indians,  as  in 
mediaeval  Ireland,  the  formation  of  bogs  may  be  commenced 
by  the  neglect  of  man  to  remove,  from  the  natural  channels 
of  superficial  drainage,  the  tops  and  branches  of  trees  felled 

has  a  thickness  of  four  metres,  and  some  of  them,  at  first  lower  than 
the  sea,  have  been  thus  raised  and  drained  so  as  to  grow  summer  crops, 
such,  for  example,  as  maize." — BOITEL,  Mise  en  xaleur  des  Terres  pauvrcs, 
p.  227. 

The  bogs  of  Denmark — the  examination  of  which  by  Steenstrup  and 
Vanpeil  lias  presented  such  curious  results  with  respect  to  the  natural  suc 
cession  of  forest  trees — appear  to  have  gone  through  this  gradual  process 
of  drying,  and  the  birch,  which  grows  freely  in  very  wet  soils,  has  con 
tributed  very  effectually  by  its  annual  deposits  to  raise  the  surface  above 
the  water  level,  and  tins  to  prepare  the  ground  for  the  oak. — VAUPELL, 
Bogcns  Indvandring,  pp.  39,  40. 


32  SMALL    QUADRUPEDS   AND   INSECTS. 

for  the  various  purposes  to  which  wood  is  applicable  in  hia 
rude  industry ;  and,  when  the  flow  of  the  water  is  thus 
checked,  nature  goes  on  with  the  processes  I  have  already 
described.  In  such  half-civilized  regions,  too,  windfalls  are 
more  frequent  than  in  those  where  the  forest  is  unbroken, 
because,  when  openings  have  been  made  in  it,  for  agricultural 
or  other  purposes,  the  entrance  thus  afforded  to  the  wind 
occasions  the  sudden  overthrow  of  hundreds  of  trees  which 
might  otherwise  have  stood  for  generations,  and  thus  have 
fallen  to  the  ground,  only  one  by  one,  as  natural  decay 
brought  them  down.*  Besides  this,  the  flocks  bred  by  man  in 
the  pastoral  state,  keep  down  the  incipient  growth  of  trees  on 
the  half-dried  bogs,  and  prevent  them  from  recovering  their 
primitive  condition. 

Young  trees  in  the  native  forest  are  sometimes  girdled  and 
killed  by  the  smaller  rodent  quadrupeds,  and  their  growth  is 
checked  by  birds  which  feed  on  the  terminal  bud ;  but  these 
animals,  as  we  shall  see,  are  generally  found  on  the  skirts  of 
the  wood  only,  not  in  its  deeper  recesses,  and  hence  the  mis 
chief  they  do  is  not  extensive.  The  insects  which  damage 
primitive  forests  by  feeding  upon  products  of  trees  essential  to 
their  growth,  are  not  numerous,  nor  is  their  appearance,  in 
destructive  numbers,  frequent ;  and  those  which,  perforate  the 
steins  and  branches,  to  deposit  and  hatch  their  eggs,  more 
commonly  select  dead  trees  for  that  purpose,  though,  unhap 
pily,  there  are  important  exceptions  to  this  latter  remark. f  I 

*  Careful  examination  of  the  peat  mosses  in  North  Sjcelland — which 
are  so  abundant  in  fossil  wood  that,  within  thirty  years,  they  have  yielded 
above  a  million  of  Tees — shows  that  the  trees  have  generally  fallen  from 
age  and  not  from  wind.  They  are  found  in  depressions  on  the  declivities 
of  uhich  they  grew,  and  they  lie  with  the  top  lowest,  always  falling 
toward  the  bottom  of  the  valley. — VAUPELL,  Bogens  Indvandring  i  d6 
Daiishe  Skove,  pp.  10, 14. 

t  The  locust  insect,  Clitus  piclus,  which  deposits  its  eggs  in  the  Ameri 
can  Ir.cust,  Eobinia  pseudacacia,  is  one  of  these,  and  is  ravages  have  been 
and  still  are  most  destructive  to  that  very  valuable  tree,  so  remarkable  for 
combining  rapidity  of  growth  with  strength  and  durability  of  wood.  This 
insect,  I  believe,  has  not  yet  appeared  in  Europe,  whore,  since  the  so  gen- 


INJUBIOUS   INSECTS.  83 

do  not  know  that  we  have  any  evidence  of  the  destruction  or 
serious  injury  of  American  forests  by  insects,  before  or  even 
soon  after  the  period  of  colonization  ;  but  since  the  white  man 
has  laid  bare  a  vast  proportion  of  the  earth's  surface,  and' 
thereby  produced  changes  favorable,  perhaps,  to  the  multipli 
cation  of  these  pests,  they  have  greatly  increased  in  numbers, 
and,  apparently,  in  voracity  also.  Not  many  years  ago,  the 
pines  on  thousands  of  acres  of  land  in  North  Carolina,  were 
destroyed  by  insects  not  known  to  have  ever  done  serious 
injury  to  that  tree  before.  In  such  cases  as  this  and  others  of 
the  like  sort,  there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  man  is  the 
indirect  cause  of  an  evil  for  which  he  pays  so  heavy  a  penalty. 
Insects  increase  whenever  the  birds  which  feed  upon  them 
disappear.  Hence,  in  the  wanton  destruction  of  the  robin  and 
other  insectivorous  birds,  the  fiipcs  implumis,  the  featherless 
biped,  man,  is  not  only  exchanging  the  vocal  orchestra  which 
greets  the  rising  sun  for  the  drowsy  beetle's  evening  drone, 
and  depriving  his  groves  and  his  fields  of  their  fairest  orna 
ment,  but  he  is  waging  a  treacherous  warfare  on  his  natural 
allies.* 

eral  employment  of  the  Robinia  to  clothe  and  protect  embankments  and 
the  scarps  of  deep  cuts  on  railroads,  it  would  do  incalculable  mischief.  As 
a  traveller,  however,  I  should  find  some  compensation  for  this  evil  in  the 
destruction  of  these  acacia  hedges,  which  as  completely  obstruct  the  view 
on  hundreds  of  miles  of  French  and  Italian  railways,  as  the  garden  walls 
of  the  same  countries  do  on  the  ordinary  roads.  See  Appendix,  No.  4. 

*  In  the  artificial  woods  of  Europe,  insects  are  far  more  numerous  and 
destructive  to  trees  than  in  the  primitive  forests  of  America,  and  the  same 
remark  may  be  made  of  the  smaller  rodents,  such  as  moles,  mice,  and 
squirrels.  In  the  dense  native  wood,  the  ground  and  the  air  are  too 
humid,  the  depth  of  shade  too  great  for  many  tribes  of  these  creatures, 
while  near  the  natural  meadows  and  other  open  grounds,  where  circum 
stances  are  otherwise  more  favorable  for  their  existence  and  multiplica 
tion,  their  numbers  are  kept  down  by  birds,  serpents,  foxes,  and  smaller 
predacious  quadrupeds.  In  civilized  countries,  these  natural  enemies  of 
the  worm,  the  beetle  and -the  mole,  are  persecuted,  sometimes  almost  ex 
terminated,  by  man,  who  also  removes  from  his  plantations  the  decayed 
or  wind-fallen  trees,  the  shrubs  and  un  'erwood,  which,  in  a  state  of 
nature,  furnished  food  and  shelter  to  the  borer  and  the  rodent,  and  often 
3 


34  STABILITY    OF   NATURE. 

Iii  fine,  in  countries  untrodden  by  man,  the  proportions 
and  relative  positions  of  land  and  water,  the  atmospheric 
precipitation  and  evaporation,  the  therm ometric  mean,  and 
the  distribution  of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  are  subject  to 
change  only  from  geological  influences  so  slow  in  their  opera 
tion  that  the  geographical  conditions  may  be  regarded  as 
constant  and  immutable.  These  arrangements  of  nature  it  is, 
in  most  cases,  highly  desirable  substantially  to  maintain,  when 
such  regions  become  the  seat  of  organized  commonwealths. 
It  is,  therefore,  a  matter  of  the  first  importance,  that,  in 
commencing  the  process  of  fitting  them  for  permanent  civil 
ized  occupation,  the  transforming  operations  should  be  so  con 
ducted  as  not  unnecessarily  to  derange  and  destroy  what,  in  too 
many  cases,  it  is  beyond  the  power  of  man  to  rectify  or  restore. 

also  to  the  animals  that  preyed  upon  them.  Hence  the  insect  and  the 
gnawing  quadruped  are  allowed  to  increase,  from  the  expulsion  of  the 
police  which,  in  the  natural  wood,  prevent  their  excessive  multiplication, 
and  they  become  destructive  to  the  forest  because  they  are  driven  to  the 
living  tree  for  nutriment  and  cover.  The  forest  of  Fontainebleau  is  almost 
wholly  without  birds,  and  their  absence  is  ascribed  by  some  writers  to 
the  want  of  water,  which,  in  the  thirsty  sands  of  that  wood,  does  not 
gather  into  running  brooks ;  but  the  want  of  undergrowth  is  perhaps 
an  equally  good  reason  for  their  scarcity.  In  a  wood  of  spontaneous 
growth,  ordered  and  governed  by  nature,  the  squirrel  does  not  attack 
trees,  or  at  least  the  injury  he  may  do  is  too  trifling  to  be  perceptible,  but 
he  is  a  formidable  enemy  to  the  plantation.  "  The  squirrels  bite  the  cones 
of  the  pine  and  consume  the  seed  which  might  serve  to  restock  the  wood ; 
they  do  still  more  mischief  by  gnawing  off,  near  the  leading  shoot,  a  strip 
of  bark,  and  thus  often  completely  girdling  the  tree.  Trees  so  injured 
must  be  felled,  as  they  would  never  acquire  a  vigorous  growth.  The 
squirrel  is  especially  destructive  to  the  pine  in  Sologne,  where  he  gnaws 
the  bark  of  trees  twenty  or  twenty -five  years  old."  But  even  here,  nature 
sometimes  provides  a  compensation,  by  making  the  appetite  of  this  quad 
ruped  serve  to  prevent  an  excessive  production  of  seed  cone?,  which  tends 
to  obstruct  the  due  growth  of  the  leading  shoot.  "  In  some  of  the  pineries 
of  Brittany  whi<-h  produce  cones  so  abundantly  as  to  strangle  the  develop 
ment  of  the  leading  shoot  of  the  maritime  pine,  it  has  been  observed  that, 
the  pines  are  most  vigorous  where  the  squirrels  are  most  numerous,  a  result 
attributed  to  the  repression  of  the  cones  by  this  rodent." — BOITEL,  Mise  en 
vdkur  dcs  Tcrrcs  pauvres,  p.  50.  See  Appendix,  No.  5. 


PHYSICAL    IMPKOVEMENT DESTKUCTIVENESS    OF   MAN.  35 

Restoration  of  Disturbed  Harmonies.    + 

.  In  reclaiming  and  reoccupying  lands  laid  waste  by  human 
improvidence  or  malice,  and  abandoned  by  man,  or  occupied 
only  by  a  nomade  or  thinly  scattered  population,  the  task  of 
the  pioneer  settler  is  of  a  very  different  character.  He  is  to 
become  a  co-worker  with  nature  in  the  reconstruction  of  the 
damaged  fabric  which  the  negligence  or  the  wantonness  of 
former  lodgers  has  rendered  untenantable.  He  must  aid  her 
in  reclothing  the  mountain  slopes  with  forests  and  vegetable 
mould,  thereby  restoring  the  fountains  which  she  provided  to 
water  them  ;  in  checking  the  devastating  fury  of  torrents,  and 
bringing  back  the  surface  drainage  to  its  primitive  narrow 
channels ;  and  in  drying  deadly  morasses  by  opening  the 
natural  sluices  which  have  been  choked  up,  and  cutting  new 
canals  for  drawing  off  their  stagnant  waters.  He  must  thus, 
-on  the  one  hand,  create  new  reservoirs,  and,  on  the  other, 
remove  mischievous  accumulations  of  moisture,  thereby  equal 
izing  and  regulating  the  sources  of  atmospheric  humidity  and 
of  flowing  water,  both  which  are  so  essential  to  all  vegetable 
growth,  and,  of  course,  to  human  and  lower  animal  life. 

Destructiveness  of  Man. 

Man  has  too  long  forgotten  that  the  earth  was  given  to 
him  for  usufruct  alone,  not  for  consumption,  still  less  for  profli 
gate  waste.  Mature  has  provided  against  the  absolute  destruc 
tion  of  any  of  her  elementary  matter,  the  raw  material  of  her 
works ;  the  thunderbolt  and  the  tornado,  the  most  convulsive 
throes  of  even  the  volcano  and  the  earthquake,  being  only 
phenomena  of  decomposition  and  recomposition.  But  she  has 
left  it  within  the  power  of  man  irreparably  to  derange  the 
combinations  of  inorganic  matter  and  of  organic  life,  which 
through  the  night  of  seons  she  had  been  proportioning  and 
balancing,  to  prepare  the  earth  for  his  habitation,  when,  in  the 
fulness  of  time,  his  Creator  should  call  him  forth  to  enter  into 
its  possession. 

Apart  from  the  hostile  influence  of  man,  the  organic  and 


36  DE8TRUCTIVEXESS    OF    MAX. 

the  inorganic  world  are,  as  I  have  remarked,  bound  together 
by  such  mutual  relations  and  adaptations  as  secure,  if  not  the 
absolute  permanence  and  equilibrium  of  both,  a  long  contin 
uance  of  the  established  conditions  of  each  at  any  given  time 
and  place,  or  at  least,  a  very  slow  and  gradual  succession  of 
changes  in  those  conditions.  But  man  is  everywhere  a  dis 
turbing  agent.  "Wherever  he  plants  his  foot,  the  harmonies  of 
nature  are  turned  to  discords.  The  proportions  and  accom 
modations  which  insured  the  stability  of  existing  arrange 
ments  are  overthrown.  Indigenous  vegetable  and  animal 
species  are  extirpated,  and  supplanted  by  others  of  foreign 
origin,  spontaneous  production  is  forbidden  or  restricted,  and 
the  face  of  the  earth  is  either  laid  bare  or  covered  with  a  new 
and  reluctant  growth  of  vegetable  forms,  and  with  alien  tribes 
of  animal  life.  These  intentional  changes  and  substitutions 
constitute,  indeed,  great  revolutions ;  but  vast  as  is  their 
magnitude  and  importance,  they  are,  as  we  shall  see,  ins'g- 
nificant  in  comparison  with  the  contingent  and  unsought 
results  which  have  flowed  from  them. 

The  fact  that,  of  all  organic  beings,  man  alone  is  to  be 
regarded  as  essentially  a  destructive  power,  and  that  he  wields 
energies  to  resist  which,  nature — that  Nature  whom  all 
material  life  and  all  inorganic  substance  obey — is  wholly 
impotent,  tends  to  prove  that,  though  living  in  physical 
nature,  he  is  not  of  her,  that  he  is  of  more  exalted  parentage, 
and  belongs  to  a  higher  order  of  existences  than  those  born  of 
her  womb  and  submissive  to  her  dictates. 

There;  are,  indeed,  brute  destroyers,  beasts  and  birds  and 
insects  of  prey- — all  animal  life  feeds  upon,  and,  of  course, 
destroys  other  life, — but  this  destruction  is  balanced  by  com 
pensations.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  very  means  by  which  the  exist 
ence  of  one  tribe  of  animals  or  of  vegetables  is  secured  against 
being  smothered  by  the  encroachment's  of  another ;  and  the 
reproductive  powers  of  species,  which  serve  as  the  food  of 
others,  are  always  proportioned  to  the  demand  they  are 
destined  to  supply.  Man  pursues  his  victims  with  reckless 
destructiveness ;  and,  while  the  sacrifice  of  life  by  the  lower 


DESTRUCTIVENESS    OF   MAN.  37 

animals  is  limited  by  the  cravings  of  appetite,  he  unsparingly 
persecutes,  even  to  extirpation,  thousands  of  organic  forms 
which  he  cannot  consume.* 

*  The  terrible  destructiveness  of  man  is  remarkably  exemplified  in  the 
chase  of  large  mammalia  and  birds  f  r  single  products,  attended  with  the 
enure  waste  of  enormous  quantities  of  flesh,  and  of  other  parts  of  the  ani 
mal,  which  are  capable  of  valuable  uses.  The  wild  cattle  of  South  America 
are  slaughtered  by  millions  for  their  hides  and  horns  ;  the  buffalo  of  North 
America  for  his  skin  or  his  tongue ;  the  elephant,  the  walrus,  and  the 
narwhal  for  their  tusks;  the  cetacea,  and  some  other  marine  animals,  for 
their  oil  and  whalebone  ;  the  ostrich  and  other  large  birds,  for  their 
plumnge.  Within  a  few  years,  sheep  have  been  killed  in  New  England  by 
whole  flocks,  for  their  pelts  nnd  suet  alone,  the  flesh  being  thrown  away; 
and  it  is  even  said  that  the  bodies  of  the  same  quadrupeds  have  been  used 
in  Australia  as  fuel  for  limekilns.  What  a  vast  amount  of  human  nutri 
ment,  of  bone,  and  of  other  animnl  produc's  valuable  in  the  arts,  is  thus 
recklessly  squandered !  In  nearly  all  these  ca-es,  the  part  which  consti 
tutes  the  motive  for  this  wholesale  destruction,  and  is  alone  saved,  is 
essentially  of  insignificant  value  as  compared  with  what  is  thrown  away. 
The  horns  and  hide  of  an  ox  are  not  economically  worth  a  tenth  part  as 
much  as  the  entire  carcass. 

One  of  the  greatest  benefits  to  be  expected  from  the  improvements  of 
civilization  is,  that  increased  facilities  of  communication  \\ill  render  it  pos 
sible  to  transport  to  places  of  consumption  much  valuable  material  that  is 
now  wasted  because  the  price  at  the  nearest  market  will  not  pay  freight. 
The  catile  slaughtered  in  South  America  for  their  hides  would  feed  mil 
lions  of  the  starving  population  of  the  Old  World,  if  their  flesh  could  be 
economically  preserved  and  transported  across  the  ocean. 

We  are  beginning  to  learn  a  better  economy  in  dealing  with  the  inor 
ganic  world.  The  utilization — or,  as  the  Germans  more  happily  call  it, 
the  Verwei  thung,  the  bewortking — °f  waste  from  metallurgical,  chemical, 
and  manufacturing  establishments,  is  among  the  most  important  results  of 
the  application  of  science  to  industrial  purposes.  The  incidental  products 
from  the  laboratories  of  manufacturing  chemists  often  become  more  valua 
ble  than  those  for  the  preparation  of  which  they  were  erected.  The  slags 
from  silver  refineries,  and  even  from  smelting  houses  of  the  coarser  metals, 
have  not  unfrequently  yielded  to  a  second  operator  a  better  return  than 
the  first  had  derived  from  dealing  with  the  natural  ore ;  and  the  saving  of 
lead  carried  off  in  the  smoke  of  furnaces  has,  of  itself,  given  a  large  profit 
on  the  capital  invested  in  the  works.  A  few  years  ago,  an  officer  of  an 
American  mint  was  charged  with  embezzling  gold  committed  to  him  for 
coinage.  He  insisted,  in  his  defence,  that  much  of  the  metal  was  vola- 


38 


DESTKTJCTIVEISrESS    OF    MAN. 


The  earth  was  not,  in  its  natural  condition,  completely 
adapted  to  the  vise  of  man,  but  only  to  the  sustenance  of  wild 
animals  and  wild  vegetation.  These  live,  multiply  their  kind 
in  just  proportion,  and  attain  their  perfect  measure  of  strength 
and  beauty,  without  producing  or  requiring  any  change  in  the 
natural  arrangements  of  surface,  or  in  each  other's  spontaneous 
tendencies,  except  such  mutual  repression  of  excessive  increase 
as  may  prevent  the  extirpation  of  one  species  by  the  encroach 
ments  of  another.  In  short,  without  man,  lower  animal  and 
spontaneous  vegetable  life  would  have  been  constant  in  type, 
distribution,  and  proportion,  and  the  physical  geography  of  the 
earth  would  have  remained  undisturbed  for  indefinite  periods, 
and  been  subject  to  revolution  only  from  possible,  unknown 
cosmical  causes,  or  from  geological  action. 

But  man,  the  domestic  animals  that  serve  him,  the  field 
and  garden  plants  the  products  of  which  supply  him  with 
food  and  clothing,  cannot  subsist  and  rise  to  the  full  devel 
opment  of  their  higher  properties,  unless  brute  and  uncon 
scious  nature  be  effectually  combated,  and,  in  a  great  degree, 
vanquished  by  human  art.  Hence,  a  certain  measure  of  trans 
formation  of  terrestrial  surface,  of  suppression  of  natural,  and 
stimulation  of  artificially  modified  productivity  becomes  neces 
sary.  This  measure  man  has  unfortunately  exceeded.  He  has 
felled  the  forests  whose  network  of  fibrous  roots  bound  the 
mould  to  the  rocky  skeleton  of  the  earth ;  but  had  he  allowed 
here  and  there  a  belt  of  woodland  to  reproduce  itself  by  spon 
taneous  propagation,  most  of  the  mischiefs  which  his  reckless 
destruction  of  the  natural  protection  of  the  soil  has  occasioned 
would  have  been  averted.  He  Iras  broken  up  the  mountain 
reservoirs,  the  percolation  of  whose  waters  through  unseen 
channels  supplied  the  fountains  that  refreshed  his  cattle  and 
fertilized  his  fields ;  but  he  has  neglected  to  maintain  the 
cisterns  and  the  canals  of  irrigation  which  a  wise  antiquity 


tilized  and  lost  in  refining  and  melting,  and  upon  scraping  the  chimneys 
of  the  melting  furnaces  and  the  roofs  of  the  adjacent  houses,  gold  enough 
was  found  in  the  soot  to  account  for  no  small  part  of  the  deficiency. 


DESTRUCTIVEiX'ESS   OF   MA!NT.  6V 

had  constructed  to  neutralize  the  consequences  of  its  own 
imprudence.  While  he  has  torn  the  thin  glebe  which  confined 
the  light  earth  of  extensive  plains,  and  has  destroyed  the  fringe 
of  .semi-aquatic  plants  which  skirted  the  coast  and  checked 
the  drifting  of  the  sea  sand,  he  has  failed 'to  prevent  the 
spreading  of  the  dunes  by  clothing  them  with  artificially 
propagated  vegetation.  He  has  ruthlessly  warred  on  all  the 
tribes  of  animated  nature  whose  spoil  he  could  convert  to  his 
own  uses,  and  he  has  not  protected  the  birds  which  prey  on 
the  insects  most  destructive  to  his  own  harvests. 

Purely  untutored  humanity,  it  is  true,  interferes  compara 
tively  little  with  the  arrangements  of  nature,*  and  the  destruc- 

*  It  is  an  interesting  and  not  hitherto  sufficiently  noticed  fact,  that  the 
domestication  of  the  organic,  world,  so  far  as  it  has  yet  been  achieved,  be 
long?,  not  indeed  to  the  savage  state,  but  to  the  earliest  dawn  of  civilization, 
the  conquest  <-f  inorganic  nature  almost  as  exclusively  to  the  most  advanced 
stages  of  artificial  culture.  It  is  familiarly  known  to  all  who  have  occupied 
themselves  with  the  psychology  and  habits  of  the  ruder  races,  and  of  per 
sons  with  imperfectly  developed  intellects  in  civilized  life,  that  although 
these  humble  tribes  and  individuals  sacrifice,  without  scruple,  the  lives  of 
the  lower  animals  to  the  gratification  of  their  appetites  and  the  supply  of 
their  other  physical  wants,  yet  they  nevertheless  seem  to  cherish  with 
brutes,  and  even  with  vegetable  life,  sympathies  which  are  much  more 
feebly  felt  by  civilized  men.  The  popular  traditions  of  the  simpler  peoples 
recognize  a  certain  community  of  nature  between  man,  brute  animals,  and 
even  plants  ;  and  this  serves  to  explain  why  the  apologue  or  fable,  which 
ascribes  the  power  of  speech  and  the  faculty  of  reason  to  birds,  quadrupeds, 
insects,  flowers,  and  trees,  is  one  of  the  earliest  forms  of  literary  compo 
sition. 

In  almost  every  wild  trib>.?,  some  particular  quadruped  or  bird,  though 
persecuted  as  a  destroyer  of  more  domestic  beasts,  or  hunted  for  food,  is 
regarded  with  peculiar  respect,  one  might  almost  say,  affection.  Some  of 
the  North  American  aboriginal  nations  celebrate  a  propitiatory  feast  to  the 
manes  of  the  intended  victim  before  they  commence  a  bear  hunt;  and  the 
Norwegian  peasantry  have  not  only  retained  an  old  proverb  which  ascribes 
to  the  same  animal  "  ti  Man-da  Styrlce  oy  tolv  Mcends  Vid"  ten  men's 
strength  and  twelve  men's  cunning,  but  they  still  pay  to  him  something 
of  the  reverence  with  which  ancient  superstition  invested  him.  The 
student  of  Icelandic  literature  will  find  in  the  saga  of  Finribogi  Jiinn  rami 
a  curious  illustration  of  this  feeling,  in  an  account  of  a  dialogue  between  a 


DESTKUCTIVENESS    OF   MAN. 

tive  agency  of  man  becomes  more  and  more  energetic  and 
unsparing  as  lie  advances  in  civilization,  until  the  impoverish 
ment,  with  which  his  exhaustion  of  the  natural  resources  of 
the  soil  is  threatening  him,  at  last  awakens  him  to  the  neces- 

Norwegian  bear  and  an  Icelandic  champion — dumb  show  on  the  part  of 
Bruin,  and  chivalric  words  on  that  of  Finnbogi — followed  by  a  duel,  in 
which  the  latter,  who  had  thrown  away  his  arms  and  armor  in  order  that 
the  combatants  might  meet  on  equal  terms,  was  victorious.  Drummond 
Hay's  very  interesting  work  on  Morocco  contains  many  amusing  notices 
of  a  similar  feeling  entertained  by  the  Moors  toward  the  redoubtable 
enemy  of  their  flocks — the  lion. 

This  sympathy  helps  us  to  understand  how  it  is  that  most  if  not  all 
the  domestic  animals — if  indeed  they  ever  existed  in  a  wild  state — were- 
appropriated,  reclaimed  and  trained  before  men  had  been  gathered  into 
organized  and  fixed  communities,  that  almost  every  known  esculent  plant 
had  acquired  substantially  its  present  artificial  character,  and  that  the 
properties  of  nearly  all  vegetable  drugs  and  poisons  were  known  at  the 
remotest  period  to  which  historical  records  reach.  Did  nature  bestow 
upon  primitive  man  some  instinct  akin  to  that  by  which  she  teaches  the 
brute  to  select  the  nutritious  and  to  reject  the  noxious  vegetables  indis 
criminately  mixed  in  forest  and  pasture  ? 

This  instinct,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  far  from  infallible,  and,  as  has 
been  hundreds  of  times  remarked  by  naturalists,  it  is  in  many  cases  not  an 
original  faculty  but  an  acquired  and  transmitted  habit.  It  is  a  fact  familiar 
to  persons  engaged  in  sheep  husbandry  in  New  England — and  I  have  seen 
it  confirmed  by  personal  observation — that  sheep  bred  where  the  common 
laurel,  as  it  is  called,  Kalmia  angustifolia,  abounds,  almost  always  avoid 
browsing  upon  the  leaves  of  that  plant,  while  those  brought  from  districts 
where  laurel  is  unknown,  and  turned  into  pastures  where  it  grows,  very 
often  feed  upon  it  and  are  poisoned  by  it.  A  curious  acquired  and  hered 
itary  instinct,  of  a  different  character,  may  not  improperly  be  noticed  here. 
I  refer  to  that  by  which  horses  bred  in  provinces  where  quicksands  are 
common  avoid  their  dangers  or  extricate  themselves  from  them.  See 
BEEMONTIER,  Memoire  sur  les  Dunes,  Annales  des  Ponts  et  Chaussees,  1833  : 
premier  semcxtre,  pp.  155-157. 

It  is  commonly  said  in  New  England,  and  I  believe  with  reason,  that 
the  crows  of  this  generation  are  wiser  than  their  ancestors.  Scarecrows 
which  were  effectual  fifty  years  ago  are  no  longer  respected  by  the  plun 
derers  of  the  cornfield,  and  new  terrors  must  from  time  to  time  be  invented 
for  its  protection.  See  Appendix,  No.  6. 

Civilization  lias  added  little  to  the  number  of  vegetable  or  animal 
Fpecies  grown  in  our  fields  or  bred  in  our  fold?,  while,  on  the  contrary, 


CHARACTER   OF   MAN'S    ACTION.  41 

sity  of  preserving  what  is  left,  if  not  of  restoring  what  has 
been  wantonly  wasted.  The  wandering  savage  grows  no  cul 
tivated  vegetable,  fells  no  forest,  and  extirpates  no  useful 
plant,  no  noxious  weed.  If  his  skill  in  the  chase  enables  him 
to  entrap  numbers  of  the  animals  on  which  he  feeds,  he  com 
pensates  this  loss  by  destroying  also  the  lion,  the  tiger,  the 
wolf,  the  otter,  the  seal,  and  the  eagle,  thus  indirectly  protect 
ing  the  feebler  quadrupeds  and  fish  and  fowls,  which  would 
otherwise  become  the  booty  of  beasts  and  birds  of  prey.  But 
with  stationary  life,  or  rather  with  the  pastoral  state,  man  at 
once  commences  an  almost  indiscriminate  warfare  upon  all  the 
forms  of  animal  and  vegetable  existence  around  him,  and  as 
he  advances  in  civilization,  he  gradually  eradicates  or  trans 
forms  every  spontaneous  product  of  the  soil  he  occupies.* 

Human  and  Brute  Action  Compared. 

It  has  been  maintained  by  authorities  as  high  as  any 
known  to  modern  science,  that  the  action  of  man  upon 
nature,  though  greater  in  degree,  does  not  differ  in  kind,  from 

the  subjugation  of  the  inorganic  forces,  and  the  consequent  extension  of 
man's  sway  over,  not  the  annual  products  of  the  earth  only,  but  her  sub 
stance  and  her  springs  of  action,  is  almost  entirely  the  work  of  highly  re 
fined  and  cultivated  ages.  The  employment  of  the  elasticity  of  wood  and 
of  horn,  as  a  projectile  power  in  the  bow,  is  nearly  universal  among  the 
rudest  savages.  The  application  of  compressed  air  to  the  same  purpose,  in 
the  blowpipe,  is  more  restricted,  and  the  use  of  the  mechanical  powers, 
the  inclined  plane,  the  wheel  and  axle,  and  even  the  wedge  and  lever, 
seems  almost  unknown  except  to  civilized  man.  I  have  myself  seen  Eu 
ropean  peasants  to  whom  one  of  the  simplest  applications  of  this  latter 
power  was  a  revelation. 

*  The  difference  between  the  relations  of  savage  life,  and  of  incipient 
civilization,  to  nature,  is  well  seen. in  that  part  of  the  valley  of  the  Missis 
sippi  which  was  once  occupied  by  the  mound  builders  and  afterward  by 
the  far  less  developed  Indian  tribes.  When  the  tillers  of  the  fields,  which 
must  have  been  cultivated  to  sustain  the  large  population  that  once  inhab 
ited  those  regions  perished,  or  w<  re  driven  out,  the  soil  fell  back  to  the 
normal  forest  state,  and  the  savages  who  succeeded  the  more  advanced 
race  inlerfered  very  little,  if  at  all,  with  the  ordinary  course  of  spon 
taneous  nature. 


42  CHARACTER  OF  MAN5S   ACTION. 

that  of  wild  animals.  It  appears  to  me  to  differ  in  essential 
character,  because,  though  it  is  often  followed  by  unforeseen 
and  un desired  results,  yet  it  is  nevertheless  guided  by  a  self- 
conscious  and  intelligent  will  aiming  as  often  at  secondary  an<? 
remote  as  at  immediate  objects.  The  wild  animal,  on  the 
other  hand,  acts  instinctively,  and,  so  far  as  we  are  able  to 
perceive,  always  with  a  view  to  single  and  direct  purposes. 
The  backwoodsman  and  the  beaver  alike  fell  trees ;  the  man 
that  he  may  convert  the  forest  into  an  olive  grove  that  will 
mature  its  fruit  only  for  a  succeeding  generation,  the  beaver 
that  lie  may  feed  upon  their  bark  or  use  them  in  the  construction 
of  his  habitation.  Human  differs  from  brute  action,  too,  in  its 
influence  upon  the  material  world,  because  it  is  not  controlled 
by  natural  compensations  and  balances.  Natural  arrange 
ments,  once  disturbed  by  man,  are  not  restored  until  he  retires 
from  the  field,  and  leaves  free  scope  to  spontaneous  recupera 
tive  energies  ;  the  wounds  he  inflicts  upon  the  material  crea 
tion  are  not  healed  until  he  withdraws  the  arm  that  gave  the 
blow.  On  the  other  hand,  I  am  not  aware  of  any  evidence 
that  wild  animals  have  ever  destroyed  the  smallest  forest, 
extirpated  any  organic  species  or  modified  its  natural  charac 
ter,  occasioned  any  permanent  change  of  terrestrial  surface,  or 
produced  any  disturbance  of  physical  conditions  which  nature 
has  not,  of  herself,  repaired  without  the  expulsion  of  the 
animal  that  had  caused  it.* 

The  form  of  geographical  surface,  and  very  probably  the 
climate  of  a  given  country,  depend  much  on  the  character  of 
the  vegetable  life  belonging  to  it.  Man  has,  by  domestication, 
greatly  changed  the  habits  and  properties  of  the  plants  he 
rears;  he  has,  by  voluntary  selection,  immensely  modified  the 
forms  and  qualities  of  the  animated  creatures  that  serve  him  ; 
and  he  has,  at  the  same  time,  completely  rooted  out  many 
forms  of  animal  if  not  of  vegetable  being.f  What  is  there,  in 

*  There  is  a  possible— but  only  a  possible — exception  in  the  case  of  the 
American  bison.  See  note  on  that  subject  in  chap,  iii,  post. 

t  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  modification  of  organic  species  by 
natural  selection,  there  is  certainly  no  evidence  that  animals  have  exerted 


PHYSICAL   DECAY. 

the  influence  of  brute  life,  that  corresponds  to  this  ?  We  have 
no  reason  to  believe  that  in  that  portion  of  the  American 
continent  which,  though  peopled  by  many  tribes  of  quadruped 
and  fowl,  remained  uninhabited  by  man,  or  only  thinly  occu 
pied  by  purely  savage  tribes,  any  sensible  geographical  change 
had  occurred  within  twenty  centuries  before  the  epoch  of 
discovery  and  colonization,  while,  during  the  same  period, 
man  had  changed  millions  of  square  miles,  in  the  fairest  and 
most  fertile  regions  of  the  Old  World,  into  the  barrenest 
deserts. 

The  ravages  committed  by  man  subvert  the  relations  and 
destroy  the  balance  which  nature  had  established  between  her 
O]'gam£«l  and  her  inorganic  creations;  and  she  avenges  her 
self  upon  the  intruder,  by  letting  loose  npon  her  defaced 
provinces  destructive  energies  hitherto  kept  in  check  by 
organic  forces  destined  to  be  his  best  auxiliaries,  but  which  he 
has  unwisely  dispersed  and  driven  from  the  field  of  action. 
When  the  forest  is  gone,  the  great  reservoir  of  moisture  stored 
up  in  its  vegetable  mould  is  evaporated,  and  returns  only  in 
deluges  of  rain  to  wash  away  the  parched  dust  into  which  that 
mould  has  been  converted.  The  well-wooded  and  humid  hills 
are  turned  to  ridges  of  dry  rock,  which  encumbers  the  low 
grounds  and  chokes  the  watercourses  with  its  debris,  and — • 
except  in  countries  favored  with  an  equable  distribution  of 
rain  through  the  seasons,  and  a  moderate  and  regular  inclina 
tion  of  surface — the  whole  earth,  unless  rescued  by  human  art 
from  the  physical  degradation  to  which  it  tends,  becomes  an 
assemblage  of  bald  mountains,  of  barren,  turfless  hills,  and  of 
swampy  and  malarious  plains.  There  are  parts  of  Asia  Minor, 
of  Northern  Africa,  of  Greece,  and  even  of  Alpine  Europe, 
where  the  operation  of  causes  set  in  action  by  man  has 
brought  the  face  of  the  earth  to  a  desolation  almost  as  com 
plete  as  that  of  the  moon  ;  and  though,  within  that  brief  space 

npon  any  form  of  lifo  an  influence  analogous  to  that  of  domestication  upon 
plants,  quadrupeds,  and  birds  reared  artifici  illy  by  man  ;  and  this  is  aa 
true  of  unforeseen  as  of  purposely  effected  improvements  accomplished  by 
voluntary  selection  of  breeding  animals. 


PHYSICAL   IMPROVEMENT. 

of  time  which  we  call  "  the  historical  period,"  they  are  known 
to  have  been  covered  with  luxuriant  woods,  verdant  pastures, 
and  fertile  meadows,  they  are  now  too  far  deteriorated  to  bo 
reclaimable  by  man,  nor  can  they  become  again  fitted  for 
human  use,  except  through  great  geological  changes,  or  other 
mysterious  influences  or  agencies  of  which  we  have  no  present 
knowledge,  and  over  which  we  have  no  prospective  control. 
The  earth  is  fast  becoming  an  unfit  home  for  its  noblest  inhab 
itant,  and  another  era  of  equal  human  crime  and  human 
improvidence,  and  of  like  duration  with  that  through  which 
traces  of  that  crime  and  that  improvidence  extend,  would 
reduce  it  to  such  a  condition  of  impoverished  productiveness, 
of  shattered  surface,  of  climatic  excess,  as  to  threaten  the 
depravation,  barbarism,  and  perhaps  even  extinction  of  the 


epecies.* 


Physical  Improvement. 


True,  there  is  a  partial  reverse  to  this  picture.  On  narrow 
theatres,  new  forests  have  been  planted ;  inundations  of  flowing 
streams  restrained  by  heavy  walls  of  masonry  and  other  con 
structions  ;  torrents  compelled  to  aid,  by  depositing  the  slime 
with  which  they  are  charged,  in  filling  up  lowlands,  and 

— "Ami  it  maybe  remarked  that,  as  the  world  has  passed  through 
these  several  stages  of  strife  to  produce  a  Christendom,  so  by  relaxing  in 
the  enterprises  it  has  learnt,  does  it  tend  downwards,  through  inverted 
steps,  to  wildness  and  the  waste  again.  Let  a  people  give  up  their  contest 
witli  moral  evil ;  disregard  the  injustice,  the  ignorance,  the  greediness,  that 
may  prevail  among  them,  and  part  more  and  more  with  the  Christian  ele 
ment  of  their  civilization  ;  and  in  declining  this  battle  with  sin,  they  will 
inevitably  get  embroiled  with  men.  Threats  of  war  and  revolution  punish 
their  unfaithfulness ;  and  if  then,  instead  of  retracing  their  steps,  they 
yield  again,  and  are  driven  before  the  storm,  the  very  arts  they  had  cre 
ated,  the  structures  they  had  raised,  the  usages  they  had  established,  are 
swept  away  ;  'in  that  very  day  their  thoughts  perish.'  The  portion  they 
had  reclaimed  from  the  young  earth's  rnggedness  is  lest ;  and  failing  to 
stand  fast  against  man,  they  finally  get  embroiled  with  nature,  and  are 
thrust  down  beneath  her  ever-living  hand." — MAETIXEAU'S  Sermon,  "Ths 
Good  Soldier  of  Jesus  Christ" 


LIMITS    OF    HUMAN    POWER.  4:5 

raising  tlie  level  of  morasses  which  their  own  overflows  had 
created ;  ground  submerged  by  the  encroachments  of  the 
ocean,  or  exposed  to  be  covered  by  its  tides,  has  been  rescued 
from  its  dominion  by  diking ;  *  swamps  and  even  lakes  have 
been  drained,  and  their  beds  brought  within  the  domain  of 
agricultural  industry  ;  drifting  coast  dunes  have  been  checked 
and  made  productive  by  plantation  ;  seas  and  inland  waters 
have  been  repeopled  with  fish,  and  even  the  sands  of  the 
Sahara  have  been  fertilized  by  artesian  fountains.  These 
achievements  are  more  glorious  than  the  proudest  triumphs  of 
war,  but,  thus  far,  they  give  but  faint  hope  that  we  shall  yet 
make  full  atonement  for  our  spendthrift  waste  of  the  bounties 
of  nature. 

It  is,  on  the  one  hand,  rash  and  unphilosophical  to  attempt 
to  set  limits  to  the  ultimate  power  of  man  over  inorganic 
nature,  and  it  is  unprofitable,  on  the  other,  to  speculate  on 
what  may  be  accomplished  by  the  discovery  of  now  unknown 
and  unimagined  natural  forces,  or  even  by  the  invention  of 
new  arts  and  new  processes.  But  since  we  have  seen  aerosta 
tion,  the  motive  power  of  elastic  vapors,  the  wonders  of 
modern  telegraphy,  the  destructive  explosiveness  of  gun 
powder,  and  even  of  a  substance  so  harmless,  unresisting,  and 
inert  as  cotton,  nothing  in  the  way  of  mechanical  achievement 
seems  impossible,  and  it  is  hard  to  restrain  the  imagination 
from  wandering  forward  a  couple  of  generations  to  an  epoch 
when  our  descendants  shall  have  advanced  as  far  beyond  us  in 
physical  conquest,  as  we  have  marched  beyond  the  trophies 
erected  by  our  grandfathers. 

I  must  therefore  be  understood  to  mean  only,  that  no 
agencies  now  known  to  man  and  directed  by  him  seem 
adequate  to  the  reducing  of  great  Alpine  precipices  to  such 

*  Tl;e  dependence  of  man  upon  the  aid  of  spontaneous  nature,  in  his 
most  arduous  material  works,  is  curiously  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  one 
of  the  most-  serious  difficulties  to  be  encountered  in  executing  the  proposed 
gijrantic  scheme  of  draining  the  Zuiderzee  in  Holland,  is  that  of  procuring 
brushwood  for  the  fascines  to  be  employed  in  the  embankments.  See 
DIGGELEN'S  pamphlet,  "  Groote  Werl-en  in  Nederland." 


4:6  ACCUMULATION   OF   NATURAL    FOKCES. 

slopes  as  would  enable  them  to  support  a  vegetable  clothing, 
or  to  the  covering  of  large  extents  of  denuded  rock  with  earth, 
and  planting  upon  them  a  forest  growth.  But  among  the 
mysteries  which  science  is  yet  to  reveal,  there  may  be  still 
undiscovered  methods  of  accomplishing  even  grander  wonders 
than  these.  Mechanical  philosophers  have  suggested  the  pos 
sibility  of  accumulating  and  treasuring  up  for  human  use  some 
of  the  greater  natural  forces,  which  the  action  of  the  elements 
puts  forth  with  such  astonishing  energy.  Could  we  gather, 
and  bind,  and  make  subservient  to  our  control,  the  power 
which  a  West  Indian  hurricane  exerts  through  a  small  area  in 
one  continuous  blast,  or  the  momentum  expended  by  the 
waves,  in  a  tempestuous  winter,  upon  the  breakwater  at  Cher 
bourg,*  or  the  lifting  power  of  the  tide,  for  a  month,  at  the 
head  of  the  Bay  of  Fimdy,  or  the  pressure  of  a  square  mile  of 
sea  water  at  the  depth  of  five  thousand  fathoms,  or  a  moment 
of  the  might  of  an  earthquake  or  a  volcano,  our  age — which 
moves  no  mountains  and  casts  them  into  the  sea  by  faith  alone 
—might  hope  to  scarp  the  rugged  walls  of  the  Alps  and 
Pyrenees  and  Mount  Taurus,  robe  them  once  more  in  a  vege 
tation  as  rich  as  that  of  their  pristine  woods,  and  turn  their 
wasting  torrents  into  refreshing  streams,  f 

*  In  heavy  storms,  the  force  of  the  waves  as  they  strike  against  a  sea 
wall  is  from  one  and  a  half  to  two  tons  to  the  square  foot,  and  Stevenson, 
in  one  instance  at  Skerryvore,  found  this  force  equal  to  three  tons  per  foot. 

The  seaward  front  of  the  breakwater  at  Cherbourg  exposes  a  surface 
of  about  2,500,000  square  feet.  In  rough  weather  the  waves  beat  against 
this  whole  face,  though  at  the  depth  of  twenty-two  yards,  which  is  the 
height  of  the  breakwater,  they  exert  a  very  much  less  violent  motive  force 
than  at  and  near  the  surface  of  the  sea,  because  this  force  diminishes  in 
geometrical,  as  the  distance  below  the  surface  increases  in  arithmetical  pro 
portion.  The  shock  of  the  waves  is  received  several  thousand  times  in  the 
course  of  twenty-four  hours,  and  hence  the  sum  of  impulse  which  the 
breakwater  resists  in  one  stormy  day  amounts  to  many  thousands  of 
millions  of  tons.  The  breakwater  is  entirely  an  artificial  construction. 
If  then  man  could  acc'imnlate  and  control  the  forces  which  he  is  able  effect 
ually  to  resist,  he  might  be  said  to  be,  phy.-ically  speaking,  omnipotent. 

t  Some  well  known  experiments  show  tha*  it  is  quite  p.ossible  to  accu 
mulate  the  solar  heat  by  a  simple  apparatus,  and  thus  to  obtain  a  temper* 


PHYSICAL   RESTORATION.  47 

Could  this  old  world,  which  man  has  overthrown,  bo 
rebuilded,  could  human  cunning  rescue  its  wasted  hillsides 
and  its  deserted  plains  from  solitude  or  mere  nomade  occupa 
tion,  from  barrenness,  from  nakedness,  and  from  insalubrity, 
and  restore  the  ancient  fertility  and  healthful  ness  of  the 
Etruscan  sea  coast,  the  Campagna  and  the  Pontine  marshes, 
of  Calabria,  of  Sicily,  of  the  Peloponnesus  and  insular  and 
continental  Greece,  of  Asia  Minor,  of  the  slopes  of  Lebanon 
and  Ilermon,  of  Palestine,  of  the  Syrian  desert,  of  Mesopo 
tamia  and  the  delta  of  the  Euphrates,  of  the  Cyreriaica,  of 
Africa  proper,  Nivmidia,  and  Mauritania,  the  thronging  mil 
lions  of  Europe  might  still  find  room  on  the  Eastern  continent, 
and  the  main  current  of  emigration  be  turned  toward  the 
rising  instead  of  the  setting  sun. 

But  changes  like  these  must  await  great  political  and 
moral  revolutions  in  the  governments  and  peoples  by  whom 
those  regions  are  now  possessed,  a  command  of  pecuniary  and 
of  mechanical  means  not  at  present  enjoyed  by  those  nations,' 
and  a  more  advanced  and  generally  diffused  knowledge  of  the 
processes  by  which  the  amelioration  of  soil  and  climate  is  pos 
sible,  than  now  anywhere  exists.  Until  such  circumstances 
shall  conspire  to  favor  the  work  of  geographical  regeneration, 
the  countries  I  have  mentioned,  with  here  and  there  a  local 
exception,  will  continue  to  sink  into  yet  deeper  desolation,  and 

atnre  which  might  be  economically  important  even  in  the  climate  of  Swit 
zerland.  Saussure,  by  receiving  the  sun's  rays  in  a  nest  of  boxes  black 
ened  within  and  covered  with  glass,  raised  a  thermometer  enclosed  in  the 
inner  box  to  the  boiling  point;  and  under  the  more  powerful  sun  of  the 
cape  of  Good  Hope,  Sir  John  Herschel  cooked  the  materials  for  a  family 
dinner  by  a  similar  process,  using,  however,  but  a  single  box,  surrounded 
with  dry  sand  and  covered  with  two  glasses.  Why  should  not  so  easy  a 
method  of  economizing  fuel  be  resorted  to  in  Italy,  and  even  in  more 
northerly  climates  ? 

The  unfortunate  John  Davidson  records  in  his  journal  that  he  saved  fuel 
in  Moroci,:  V  exposing  his  teakettle  to  the  sun  on  the  roof  of  his  house, 
where  the  watei1  rose  t-n  the  temperature  of  one  hundred  and  forty  degrees, 
and,  of  course,  needed  little  fire  to  bring  it  to  boil.  But  this  was  the 
direct  and  simple,  not  the  accumulated  heat  of  the  sun. 


48  AKREST   OF   PHYSICAL   DECAY   OF   NEW   COUNTRIES. 

in  the  mean  time,  the  American  continent,  Southern  Africa, 
Australia,  and  the  smaller  oceanic  islands,  will  be  almost  the 
only  theatres  where  man  is  engaged,  on  a  great  scale,  in  trans 
forming  the  face  of  nature. 

Arrest  of  Physical  Decay  of  New  Countries. 

Comparatively  short  as  is  the  period  through  which  the 
colonization  of  foreign  lands  by  European  emigrants  extends, 
great,  and,  it  is  to  be  feared,  sometimes  irreparable,  injury  has 
been  already  done  in  the  various  processes  by  which  man 
seeks  to  subjugate  the  virgin  earth  ;  and  many  provinces,  first 
trodden  by  the  homo  sapiens  Europe  within  the  last  two 
centuries,  begin  to  show  signs  of  that  melancholy  dilapidation 
which  is  now  driving  so  many  of  the  peasantry  of  Europe 
from  their  native  hearths.  It  is  evidently  a  matter  of  great 
moment,  not  only  to  the  population  of  the  states  where  these 
symptoms  are  manifesting  themselves,  but  to  the  general 
interests  of  humanity,  that  this  decay  should  be  arrested,  and 
that  the  future  operations  of  rural  husbandry  and  of  forest 
industry,  in  districts  yet  remaining  substantially  in  their 
native  condition,  should  be  so  conducted  as  to  prevent  the 
widespread  mischiefs  which  have  been  elsewhere  produced  by 
thoughtless  or  wanton  destruction  of  the  natural  safeguards  of 
the  soil.  This  can  be  done  only  by  the  diffusion  of  knowledge 
on  this  subject  among  the  classes  that,  in  earlier  days,  subdued 
and  tilled  ground  in  which  they  had  no  vested  rights,  but 
who,  in  our  time,  own  their  woods,  their  pastures,  and  their 
ploughlands  as  a  perpetual  possession  for  them  and  theirs,  and 
have,  therefore,  a  strong  interest  in  the  protection  of  their 

domain  against  deterioration. 

v 

Forms  and  Formations  most  liable  to  Physical  Degradation. 

The  character  and  extent  of  the  evils  under  consideration 
depend  very  much  on  climate  and  the  natural  forms  and  con 
stitution  of  surface.  If  the  precipitation,  whether  great  or 
email  in  amount,  be  equally  distributed  through  the  seasons, 


CAUSES   OF   PHYSICAL   DECAY. 

51 

so  that  there  are  neither  torrential  rains  nor  parching  drovtto 
and  if,  further,  the  general  inclination  of  ground  be  moderate, 
so  that  the  superficial  waters  are  carried  off  without  destruc 
tive  rapidity  of  flow,  and  without  sudden  accumulation  in  the 
channels  of  natural  drainage,  there  is  little  danger  of  the 
degradation  of  the  soil  in  consequence  of  the  removal  of  forest 
or  other  vegetable  covering,  and  the  natural  face  of  the  earth 
may  be  considered  as  substantially  permanent.  These  condi 
tions  are  well  exemplified  in  Ireland,  in  a  great  part  of  Eng 
land,  in  extensive  districts  in  Germany  and  France,  and,  for 
tunately,  in  an  immense  proportion  of  the  valley  of  the  Missis* 
sippi  and  the  basin  of  the  great  American  lakes,  as  well  as  in 
many  parts  of  the  continents  of  South  America  and  of  Africa. 
Destructive  changes  are  most  frequent  in  countries  of 
irregular  and  mountainous  surface,  and  in  climates  where  the 
precipitation  is  confined  chiefly  to  a  single  season,  and  where 
the  year  is  divided  into  a  wet  and  a  dry  period,  as  is  the  case 
throughout  a  great  part  of  the  Ottoman  empire,  and,  more  or 
less  strictly,  the  whole  Mediterranean  basin.  It  is  partly, 
though  by  no  means  entirely,  owing  to  topographical  and 
climatic  causes  that  the  blight,  which  has  smitten  the  fairest 
and  most  fertile  provinces  of  Imperial  Rome,  has  spared  Bri 
tannia,  Germania,  Pannonia,  and  Moesia,  the  comparatively 
inhospitable  homes  of  barbarous  races,  who,  in  the  days  of  the 
Caesars,  were  too  little  advanced  in  civilized  life  to  possess 
either  the  power  or  the  will  to  wage  that  war  against  the 
order  of  nature  which  seems,  hitherto,  an  almost  inseparable 
condition  precedent  of  high  social  culture,  and  of  great  prog 
ress  in  fine  and  mechanical  art.* 


*  In  the  successive  stages  of  social  progress,  the  most  destructive  pe 
riods  of  human  action  upon  nature  are  the  pastoral  condition,  and  that  of 
incipient  stationary  civilization,  or,  in  the  newly  discovered  countries  of 
modern  geography,  the  colonial,  which  corresponds  to  the  era  of  early 
civilization  in  older  lands.  In  more  advanced  states  of  culture,  conservative 
influences  make  themselves  felt ;  and  if  highly  civilized  communities  do 
not  always  restore  the  works  of  nature,  they  at  least  use  a  less  wasteful 
expenditure  than  their  predecessors  in  consuming  them. 
4 


48  ^  MOUNTAINOUS   COUNTRIES — CHANGE   OF   CLIMATE. 

mountainous  countries,  on  the  other  hand,  various 
causes  combine  to  expose  the  soil  to  constant  dangers.  The 
rain  and  snow  usually  fall  in  greater  quantity,  and  with  much- 
inequality7  of  distribution  ;  the  snow  on  the  summits  accumu 
lates  for  many  months  in  succession,  and  then  is  not  im fre 
quently  almost  wholly  dissolved  in  a  single  thaw,  so  that  the 
entire  precipitation  of  months  is  in  a  few  hours  hurried  clown 
the  flanks  of  the  mountains.,  and  through  the  ravines  that 
furrow  them  ;  the  natural  inclination  of  the  surface  promotes 
the  swiftness  of  the  gathering  currents  of  diluvial  rain  and  of 
melting  snow,  which  soon  acquire  an  almost  irresistible  force, 
and  power  of  removal  and  transportation  ;  the  soil  itself  is 
less  compact  and  tenacious  than  that  of  the  plains,  and  if  the 
sheltering  forest  has  been  destroyed,  it  is  confined  by  few  of 
the  threads  and  ligaments  by  which  nature  had  bound  it 
together,  and  attached  it  to  the  rocky  groundwork.  Hence 
every  considerable  shower  lays  bare  its  roods  of  rock,  and  the 
torrents  sent  down  by  the  thaws  of  spring,  and  by  occasional, 
heavy  discharges  of  the  summer  and  autumnal  rains,  are  seas 
of  mud  and  rolling  stones  that  sometimes  lay  waste,  and  bury 
beneath  them  acres,  and  even  miles,  of  pasture  and  field  and 
vineyard.* 

Physical  Decay  of  New  Countries. 

I  have  remarked  that  the  effects  of  human  action  on  the 
forms  of  the  earth's  surface  could  not  always  be  distinguished 
from  those  resulting  from  geological  causes,  and  there  is  also 
much  uncertainty  in  respect  to  the  precise  influence  of  the 

*  The  character  of  geological  formation  is  an  element  of  very  great  im 
portance  in  determining  the  amount  of  erosion  produced  by  running  water, 
and,  of  course,  in  measuring  the  consequences  of  clearing  off  the  forests. 
The  soil  of  the  French  Alps  yields  very  readily  to  the  force  of  currents, 
and  the  declivities  of  the  northern  Apennines  are  covered  with  earth  which 
becomes  itself  a  fluid  when  saturated  with  water.  Hence  the  erosion  of 
Biich  surfaces  is  vastly  greater  than  on  many  other  mountains  of  equal 
steepness  of  inclination.  This  point  is  fully  considered  by  the  authors  re 
ferred  to  in  chap,  iii,  post. 


AUSTRALIA  AS   A  FIELD   OF  OBSERVATION.  51 

clearing  and  cultivating  of  the  ground,  and  of  other  rural 
operations,  upon  climate..  It  is  disputed  whether  either  the 
mean  or  the  extremes  of  temperature,  .the  periods ,  of  the 
seasons,  or  the  amount  or  distribution  of  precipitation  and  of 
evaporation,  in  any  country  whose  annals  are  known,  have 
undergone  any  change  during  the  historical  period.  It  is, 
indeed,  impossible  to  doubt  that  many  of  the  operations  of  the 
pioneer  settler  tend  to  produce  great  modifications  in  atmo 
spheric  humidity,  temperature,  and  electricity  ;  but  we  are  at 
present  unable  to  determine  how  far  one  set  of  effects  is  neu 
tralized  by  another,  or  compensated  by  unknown  agencies. 
This  question  scientific  research  is  inadequate  to  solve,  for 
want  of  the  necessary  data ;  but  well  conducted  observation, 
in  regions  now  first  brought  under  the  occupation  of  man, 
combined  with  such  historical  evidence  as  still  exists,  may  be 
expected  at  no  distant  period  to  throw  much  light  on  this 
subject. 

Australia  is,  perhaps,  the  country  from  which  we  have  a 
right  to  expect  the  fullest  elucidation  of  these  difficult  and 
disputable  problems.  Its  colonization  did  not  commence  until 
the  physical  sciences  had  become  matter  of  almost  universal 
attention,  and  is,  indeed,  so  recent  that  the  memory  of  living 
men  embraces  the  principal  epochs  of  its  history  ;  the  pecu 
liarities  of  its  fauna,  its  flora,  and  its  geology  are  such  as  to 
have  excited  for  it  the  liveliest  interest  of  the  votaries  of 
natural  science  ;  its  mines  have  given  its  people  the  necessary 
wealth  for  procuring  the  means  of  instrumental  observation, 
and  the  leisure  required  for  the  pursuit  of  scientific  research  ; 
and  large  tracts  of  virgin  forest  and  natural  meadow  are  rap 
idly  passing  under  the  control  of  civilized  man.  Here,  then, 
exist  greater  facilities  and  stronger  motives  for  the  careful  study 
of  the  topics  in  question  than  have  ever  been  found  combined 
in  any  other  theatre  of  European  colonization. 

Li  North  America,  the  change  from  the  natural  to  the  arti 
ficial  condition  of  terrestrial  surface  began  about  the  period 
when  the  most  important  instruments  of  meteorological  obser 
vation  were  invented.  The  first  settlers  in  the  territory  now 


52  AMERICAN   PROVINCES — SCIENTIFIC   OBSERVATION. 

constituting  the  United  States  and  the  British  American  prov 
inces  had  other  things  to  do  than  to  tabulate  barometrical  and 
therm ometrical  readings,  but  there  remain  some  interesting 
physical  records  from  the  early  days  of  the  colonies,*  and  there 
is  still  an  immense  extent  of  North  American  soil  where  the 
industry  and  the  folly  of  man  have  as  yet  produced  little 
appreciable  change.  Here,  too,  with  the  present  increased 
facilities  for  scientific  observation,  the  future  effects,  direct  and 
contingent,  of  man's  labors,  can  be  measured,  and  such  precau 
tions  taken  in  those  rural  processes  which  wre  call  improve 
ments,  as  to  mitigate  evils,  perhaps,  in  some  degree,  insep 
arable  from  every  attempt  to  control  the  action  of  natural 
laws. 

-In  order  to  arrive  at  safe  conclusions,  we  must  first  obtain 
a  more  exact  knowledge  of  the  topography,  and  of  the  present 
'Superficial  and  climatic  condition  of  countries  where  the  nat 
ural  surface  is  as  yet  more  or  less  unbroken.  This  can  only  be 
accomplished  by  accurate  surveys,  and  by  a  great  multiplica 
tion  of  the  points  of  meteorological  registry,*)*  already  so 

*  The  Travels  of  Dr.  Dwight,  president  of  Yale  College,  which  embody 
the  results  of  his  personal  observations,  and  of  his  inquiries  among  the 
early  settlers,  in  his  vacation  excursions  in  the  Northern  States  of  the 
American  Union,  though  presenting  few  instrumental  measurements  or 
tabulated  results,  are  of  value  for  the  powers  of  observation  they  exhibit, 
and  for  the  sound  common  sense  with  which  many  natural  phenomena, 
such  for  instance  as  the  formation  of  the  river  meadows,  called  "inter 
vales,"  in  New  England,  are  explained.  They  present  a  true  and  interest 
ing  picture  of  physical  conditions,  many  of  which  have  long,  ceased  to 
exist  in  the  theatre  of  his  researches,  and  of  which  few  other  records  are 
extant. 

t  The  general  law  of  temperature  is  that  it  decreases  as  we  ascend. 
But,  in  hilly  regions,  the  law  is  reversed  in  cold,  still  weather,  the  cold  air 
descending,  by  reason  of  its  greater  gravity,  into  the  valleys.  If  there  be 
wind  enough,  however,  to  produce  a  disturbance  and  intermixture  of 
higher  and  lower  atmospheric  strata,  this  exception  to  the  general  law- 
does  not  take  place.  These  facts  have  long  been  familiar  to  the  common 
people  of  Switzerland  and  of  New  England,  but  their  importance  has  not 
been  sufficiently  taken  into  account  in  the  discussion  of  meteorological 
observations.  The  descent  of  the  cold  air  and  the  rise  of  the  warm  affect 


SCIENTIFIC    OBSERVATION RAILWAYS.  53 

numerous  ;  and  as,  moreover,  considerable  changes  in  the  pro 
portion  of  forest  and  of  cultivated  land,  or  of  dry  and  wholly 
or  partially  submerged  surface,  will  often  take  place  within 
brief  periods,  it  is  highly  desirable  that  the  attention  of 
observers,  in  whose  neighborhood  the  clearing  of  the  soil,  or 
the  drainage  of  lakes  and  swamps,  or  other  great  works  of 
rural  improvement,  are  going  on  or  meditated,  should  be  espe 
cially  drawn  not  only  to  revolutions  in  atmospheric  tempera 
ture  and  precipitation,  but  to  the  more  easily  ascertained  and 
perhaps  more  important  local  changes  produced  by  these 
operations  in  the  temperature  and  the  hygrometric  state  of 
the  superficial  strata  of  the  earth,  and  in  its  spontaneous  vege 
table  and  animal  products. 

The  rapid  extension  of  railroads,  which  now  everywhere 
keeps  pace  with,  and  sometimes  even  precedes,  the  occupation 
of  new  soil  for  agricultural  purposes,  furnishes  great  facilities 
for  enlarging  our  knowledge  of  the  topography  of  the  territory 
they  traverse,  because  their  cuttings  reveal  the  composition 
and  general  structure  of  surface,  and  the  inclination  and  eleva 
tion  of  their  lines  constitute  known  hypsometrical  sections, 
which  give  numerous  points  of  departure  for  the  measure 
ment  of  higher  and  lower  stations,  and  of  course  for  deter 
mining  the  relief  and  depression  of  surface,  the  slope  of  the" 
beds  of  watercourses,  and  many  other  not  less  important 
questions.* 

the  relative  temperatures  of  hills  and  valleys  to  a  much  greater  extent  than 
has  been  usually  supposed.  A  gentleman  well  known  to  me  kept  a  ther- 
mometrical  record  for  nearly  half  a  century,  in  a  New  England  country 
town,  at  an  elevation  of  at  least  1,500  feet  above  the  sea.  During  these 
years  his  thermometer  never  fell  lower  than  26°  Fahrenheit,  while  at  the 
shire  town  of  the  county,  situated  in  a  basin  one  thousand  feet  lower,  and 
ten  miles  distant,  as  well  as  at  other  points  in  similar  positions,  the  mer 
cury  froze  several  times  in  the  same  period. 

*  Railroad  surveys  must  be  received  with  great  criution  where  any 
motive  exists  for  cooking  them.  Capitalists  are  shy  of  investments  in  roadg 
with  steep  grades,  and  of  course  it  is  important  to  make  a  fair  show  of 
facilities  in  obtaining  funds  for  new  routes.  Joint-stock  companies  have 
no  souls ;  their  managers,  in  general,  no  consciences.  Cases  can  be  cited 


54:  PRACTICAL  LESSONS. 

The  geological,  hyclrographical,  and  topographical  surveys, 
which  almost  every  general  and  even  local  government  of  the 
civilized  world  is  carrying  on,  are  making  yet  more  important 
contributions  to  our  stock  of  geographical  and  general  physical 
knowledge,  and,  within  a  comparatively  short  space,  there  will 

where  engineers  and  directors  of  railroads,  with  long  grades  above  one 
hundred  feet  to  the  mile,  have  regularly  sworn  in  their  annual  reports,  for 
years  in  succession,  that  there  were  no  grades  upon  their  routes  exceeding 
half  that  elevation.  In  fact,  every  person  conversant  with  the  history  of 
these  enterprises  knows  that  in  their  public  statements  falsehood  is  the 
rule,  truth  the  exception. 

What  I  am  about  to  remark  is  not  exactly  relevant  to  my  subject ;  but 
it  is  hard  to  "  get  the  floor "  in  the  world's  great  debating  society,  and 
when  a  speaker  who  has  anything  to  say  once  finds  access  to  the  public 
ear,  he  must  make  the  most  of  his  opportunity,  without  inquiring  too  nicely 
whether  his  observations  are  uin  order."  I  shall  harm  no  honest  man  by 
endeavoring,  as  I  have  often  done  elsewhere,  to  excite  the  attention  of 
thinking  and  conscientious  men  to  the  dangers  which  threaten  the  great 
moral  and  even  political  interests  of  Christendom,  from  the  unscrupulous- 
ness  of  the  private  associations  that  now  control  the  monetary  affairs,  and 
regulate  the  transit  of  persons  and  property,  in  almost  every  civilized 
country.  More  than  one  Anu-riean  State  is  literally  governed  by  unprin 
cipled  corporations,  which  not  only  defy  the  legislative  power,  but  have, 
too  often,  corrupted  even  the  administration  of  justice.  Similar  evils 
have  become  almost  equally  rife  in  England,  and  on  the  Continent;  and  I 
believe  the  decay  of  commercial  morality,  and  indeed  of  the  sense  of  all 
higher  obligations  than  those  of  a  pecuniary  nature,  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic,  is  to  be  ascribed  more  to  the  influence  of  joint-stock  banks  and 
manufacturing  and  railway  companies,  to  the  workings,  in  short,  of  what  is 
called  the  principle  of  "  associate  action,"  than  to  any  other  one  cause  of 
demoralization. 

The  apophthegm,  "the  world  is  governed  too  much,"  though  unhap 
pily  too  truly  spoken  of  many  countries — and  perhaps,  in  some  aspects, 
true  of  all — has  done  much  mischief  whenever  it  has  been  too  uncon 
ditionally  accepted  as  a  political  axiom.  The  popular  apprehension  of 
being  over-governed,  and,  I  am  afraid,  more  emphatically  the  fear  of  being 
over-taxed,  has  had  much  to  do  with  the  general  abandonment  of  certain 
governmental  duties  by  the  ruling  powers  of  most  modern  states.  It  is 
theoretically  the  duty  of  government  to  provide  all  those  public  facilities 
of  intercommunication  and  commerce,  which  are  essential  to  the  pros 
perity  of  civilized  commonwealths,  but  which  individual  means  are  inade 
quate  to  furnish,  and  for  the  due  administration  of  which  individual  guar- 


PRACTICAL   LESSONS.  55 

be  an  accumulation  of  well  established  constant  and  historical 
facts,  from  which  we  can  safely  reason  upon  all  the  relations 
of  action  and  reaction  between  man  and  external  nature. 

But  we  are,  even  now,  breaking  up  the  floor  and  wains 
coting  and  doors  and  window  frames  of  our  dwelling,  for 
fuel  to  warm  our  bodies  and  seethe  our  pottage,  and  the  world 
cannot  afford  to  wait  till  the  slow  and  sure  progress  of  exact 
science  has  taught  it  a  better  economy.  Many  practical 
lessons  have  been  learned  by  the  common  observation  of 
unschooled  men ;  and  the  teachings  of  simple  experience,  on 
topics  where  natural  philosophy  has  scarcely  yet  spoken,  are 
not  to  be  despised. 

In  these  humble  pages,  which  do  not  in  the  least  aspire  to 
rank  among  scientific  expositions  of  the  laws  of  nature,  I  shall 

anties  are  insufficient.  Hence  public  roads,  canals,  railroads,  postal  com 
munications,  the  circulating  medium  of  exchange,  whether  metallic  or  rep 
resentative,  armies,  navies,  being  all  matters  in  which  the  nation  at  large 
lias  a  vastly  deeper  interest  than  any  private  association  can  have,  ought 
legitimately  to  be  constructed  and  provided  only  by  that  which  is  the  visi 
ble  personification  and  embodiment  of  the  nation,  namely,  its  legislative 
head.  No  doubt  the  organization  and  management  of  these  institutions 
by  government  are  liable,  as  are  all  things  human,  to  great  abuses.  The 
.multiplication  of  public  placeholders,  which  they  imply,  is  a  serious  evil. 
But  the  corruption  thus  engendered,  foul  as  it  is,  does  not  strike  so  deep  as 
the  rottenness  of  private  corporations  ;  and  official  rank,  position,  arid  duty 
have,  in  practice,  proved  better  securities  for  fidelity  and  pecuniary  integ 
rity  in  the  conduct  of  the  interests  in  question,  than  the  suretyships  of 
private  corporate  agents,  whose  bondsmen  so  often  fail  or  abscond  before 
their  principal  is  detected. 

Many  theoretical  statesmen  have  thought  that  voluntary  associations 
for  strictly  pecuniary  and  industrial  purposes,  and  for  the  construction  and 
control  of  public  works,  might  furnish,  in  democratic  countries,  a  compen 
sation  for  the  small  and  doubtful  advantages,  and  at  the  same  time  secure 
an  exemption  from  the  great  and  certain  evils,  of  aristocratic  institutions. 
The  example  of  the  American  States  shows  that  private  corporations — 
whose  rule  of  action  is  the  interest  of  the  association,  not  the  conscience 
of  the  individual — though  composed  of  ultra-democratic  elements,  may 
become  most  dangerous  enemies  to  rational  liberty,  to  the  moral  interests 
of  the  commonwealth,  to  the  purity  of  legislation  and  of  judicial  action, 
and  to  the  sacredness  of  private  rights. 


56  PRACTICAL   LESSONS. 

attempt  to  give  tlie  most  important  practical  conclusions  sug 
gested  by  the  history  of  man's  efforts  to  replenish  the  earth 
and  subdue  it ;  and  1  shall  aim  to  support  those  conclusions  by 
such  facts  and  illustrations  only  as  address  themselves  to  the 
understanding  of  every  intelligent  reader,  and  as  are  to  be 
found  recorded  in  works  capable  of  profitable  perusal,  or  at 
least  consultation,  by  persons  who  have  not  enjoyed  a  special 
scientific  training. 


TEA" 


CHAPTER  II. 


TRANSFER.  MODIFICATION,  AND  EXTIRPATION  OF  VEGETABLE  AND 
OF  ANIMAL  SPECIES. 


MODERN    GEOGRAPHY     EMBRACES     ORGANIC    LIFE TRANSFER    OF   YEGETABLE 

LIFE — FOREIGN  PLANTS  GROWN  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES — AMERICAN  PLANTS 
GROWN  IN  EUROPE — MODES  OF  INTRODUCTION  OF  FOREIGN  PLANTS — VEGE 
TABLES,  HOW  AFFKCTED  BY  TRANSFER  TO  FOREIGN  SOILS — EXTIRPATION  OF 
VEGKTABLES  — ORIGIN  OF  DOMESTIC  PLANTS — ORGANIC  LIFE  AS  A  GEOLOGICAL 

AND   GEOGRAPHICAL  AGENCY ORIGIN  AND  TRANSFER    OF    DOMESTIC  ANIMALS 

EXTIRPATION  OF  ANIMALS — NUMBERS    OF    BIRDS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 

BIRDS  AS  SOWERS  AND  CONSUMERS  OF  SEEDS,  AND  AS  DESTROYERS  OF  IN 
SECTS—DIMINUTION  AND  EXTIRPATION  OF  BIRDS — INTRODUCTION  OF  BIRDS — 

UTILITY    OF   INSECTS  AND  WORMS — INTRODUCTION    OF    INSECTS DESTRUCTION 

OF  INSECTS — REPTILES DESTRUCTION  OF  FISH INTRODUCTION  AND  BREED 
ING  OF  FISH — EXTIRPATION  OF  AQUATIC  ANIMALS— MINUTE  ORGANISMS. 

Modern  Geography  embraces  Organic  Life. 

IT  was  a  narrow  view  of  geography  which  confined  that 
science  to  delineation  of  terrestrial  surface  and  outline,  and  to 
description  of  the  relative  position  and  magnitude  of  land  and 
water.  In  its  improved  form,  it  embraces  not  only  the  globe 
itself,  but  the  living  things  which  vegetate  or  move  upon  it, 
the  varied  influences  they  exert  upon  each  other,  the  recip 
rocal  action  and  reaction  between  them  and  the  earth  they 
inhabit.  Even  if  the  end  of  geographical  studies  were  only  to 
obtain  a  knowledge  of  the  external  forms  of  the  mineral  and 
fluid  masses  which  constitute  the  globe,  it  would  still  be 
necessary  to  take*  into  account  the  element  of  life ;  for  every 
plant,  every  animal,  is  a  geographical  agency,  man  a  destruc- 


58  INFLUENCE   OF    CULTIVATED 

live,  vegetables,  and  even  wild  beasts,  restorative  powers. 
The  rushing  waters  sweep  down  earth  from  the  uplands ;  in 
the  first  moment  of  repose,  vegetation  seeks  to  reestablish 
itself  on  the  bared  surface,  and,  by  the  slow  deposit  of  its 
decaying  products,  to  raise  again  the  soil  which  the  torrent 
had  lowered.  So  important  an  element  of  reconstruction  is 
this,  that  it  has  been  seriously  questioned  whether,  upon  the 
whole,  vegetation  does  not  contribute  as  much  to  elevate,  as 
the  waters  to  depress,  the  level  of  the  surface. 

Whenever  man  has  transported  a  plant  from  its  native 
habitat  to  a  new  soil,  he  has  introduced  a  new  geographical 
force  to  act  upon  it,  and  this  generally  at  the  expense  of  some 
indigenous  growth  which  the  foreign  vegetable  has  supplanted. 
The  new  and  the  old  plants  are  rarely  the  equivalents  of  each 
other,  and  the  substitution  of  an  exotic  for  a  native  tree,  shrub, 
or  grass,  increases  or  diminishes  the  relative  importance  of  the 
vegetable  element  in  the  geography  of  the  country  to  which 
it  is  removed.  Further,  man  sows  that  lie  may  reap.  The 
products  of  agricultural  industry  are  not  suffered  to  rot  upon 
the  ground,  and  thus  raise  it  by  an  annual  stratum  of  new 
mould.  They  are  gathered,  transported  to  greater  or  less  dis 
tances,  and  after  they  have  served  their  uses  in  human  econ 
omy,  they  enter,  on  the  final  decomposition  of  their  elements, 
into  new  combinations,  and  are  only  in  small  proportion 
returned  to  the  soil  on  which  they  grew.  The  roots  of  the 
grasses,  and  of  many  other  cultivated  plants,  however,  usually 
remain  and  decay  in  the  earth,  and  contribute  to  raise  its 
surface,  though  certainly  not  in  the  same  degree  as  the  forest. 

The  vegetables,  which  have  taken  the  place  of  trees, 
unquestionably  perform  many  of  the  same  functions.  Thev 
radiate  heat,  they  condense  the  humidity  of  the  atmosphere, 
they  act  upon  the  chemical  constitution  of  the  air,  their  roots 
penetrate  the  earth  to  greater  depths  than  is  commonly  sup 
posed,  and  form  an  inextricable  labyrinth  of  filaments  which 
bind  the  soil  together  and  prevent  its  erosion  by  water.  The 
broad-leaved  annuals  and  perennials,  too,  sliade  the  ground, 
and  prevent  the  evaporation  of  moisture  from  its  surface  by 


TKANSFER   OF   VEGETABLE    LIFE.  59 

wind  and  sun.*  At  a  certain  stage  of  growth,  grass  land  is 
probably  a  more  energetic  radiator  and  condenser  than  even 
the  forest,  but  this  powerful  action  is  exerted,  in  its  full  inten 
sity,  for  a  few  days  only,  while  trees  continue  such  functions, 
with  unabated  vigor,  for  many  months  in  succession.  Upon 
the  whole,  it  seems  quite  certain,  that  no  cultivated  ground  is 
as  efficient  in  tempering  climatic  extremes,  or  in  conservation  | 
of  geographical  surface  and  outline,  as  is  the  soil  which  nature 
herself  has  planted. 

Transfer  of  Vegetable  Life. 

It  belongs  to  vegetable  and  animal  geography,  which  are 
almost  sciences  of  themselves,  to  point  out  in  detail  what  man 
has  done  to  change  the  distribution  of  plants  and  of  animated 
life  and  to  revolutionize  the  aspect  of  organic  nature ;  but 
some  of  the  more  important  facts  bearing  on  this  subject  may 
pertinently  be  introduced  here.  Most  of  the  fruit  trees  grown 

*  It  is  impossible  to  say  how  far  the  abstraction  of  water  from  the  earth 
by  broad-leaved  field  and  garden  plants — such  as  maize,  the  gourd  family, 
the  cabbage,  &c. — is  compensated  by  the  condensation  of  dew,  which  some 
times  pours  from  them  in  a  stream,  by  the  exhalation  of  aqueous  vapor 
from  their  leaves,  which  is  directly  absorbed  by  the  ground,  and  by  the 
shelter  they  afford  the  soil  from  sun  and  wind,  thus  preventing  evapo 
ration.  American  farmers  often  say  that  after  the  leaves  of  Indian  corn 
are  large  enough  to  "  shade  the  ground,"  there  is  little  danger  that  the 
plants  will  suffer  from  drought ;  but  it  is  probable  that  the  comparative 
security  of  the  fields  from  this  evil  is  in  part  due  to  the  fact  that,  at  this 
period  of  growth,  the  roots  penetrate  down  to  a  permanently  humid 
stratum  of  soil,  and  draw  from  it  the  moisture  they  require.  Stirring  the 
ground  between  the  rows  of  maize  with  a  light  harrow  or  cultivator,  in 
very  dry  seasons,  is  often  recommended  as  a  preventive  of  injury  by 
drought.  It  would  seem,  indeed,  that  loosening  and  turning  over  the  sur 
face  earth  might  aggravate  the  evil  by  promoting  the  evaporation  of  the 
little  remaining  moisture ;  but  the  practice  is  founded  partly  on  the  belief 
that  the  hygroscopicity  of  the  soil  is  increased  by  it  to  such  a  degree  that 
it  gains  more  by  absorption  than  it  loses  by  evaporation,  and  partly  on  the 
doctrine  that  to  admit  air  to  the  rootlets,  or  at  least  to  the  earth  near 
them,  is  to  supply  directly  elements  of  vegetable  growth. 


60  VEGETABLES   IMPORTANT   IN   COMMEECE. 

in  Europe  and  the  United  States  are  believed,  and — if  the 
testimony  of  Pliny  and  other  ancient  naturalists  is  to  be 
depended  upon — many  of  them  are  historically  known,  to  have 
originated  in  the  temperate  climates  of  Asia.  The  wine  grape 
has  been  thought  to  be  truly  indigenous  only  in  the  regions 
bordering  on  the  eastern  end  of  the  Black  Sea,  where  it  now, 
particularly  on  the  banks  of  the  Rion,  the  ancient  Phasis, 
propagates  itself  spontaneously,  and  grows  with  unexampled 
luxuriance.*  But  some  species  of  the  vine  seem  native  to 
Europe,  and  many  varieties  of  grape  have  been  too  long 
known  as  common  to  every  part  of  the  United  States  to  admit 
of  the  supposition  that  they  were  all  introduced  by  European 
colonists.f 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  commerce — or  at  least  the 
maritime  carrying  trade — and  the  agricultural  and  mechanical 
industry  of  the  world  are,  in  very  large  proportion,  dependent 
on  vegetable  and  animal  products  little  or  not  at  all  known 
to  ancient  Greek,  Roman,  and  Jewish  civilization.  In  many 
instances,  the  chief  supply  of  these  articles  comes  from  coun 
tries  to  which  they  are  probably  indigenous,  and  where  they 
are  still  almost  exclusively  grown  ;  but  in  many  others,  the 
plants  or  animals  from  which  they  are  derived  have  been 

*  The  vine-wood  planks  of  the  ancient  great  door  of  the  cathedral  at 
Ravenna,  wliich  measured  thirteen  feet  in  length  by  a  foot  and  a  quarter 
in  width,  are  traditionally  said  to  have  heen  brought  from  the  Black  Sea, 
by  way  of  Constantinople,  about  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  century.  No 
vines  of  such  dimensions  are  now  found  in  any  other  part  of  the  East,  and, 
though  I  have  taken  some  pains  on  the  subject.  I  never  found  in  Syria  or 
in  Turkey  a  vine  stock  exceeding  six  inches  in  diameter,  bark  excluded. 

t  The  Northmen  who — as  I  think  it  has  been  indisputably  established 
by  Professor  Rafn  of  Copenhagen — visited  the  coast  of  Massachusetts  about 
the  year  1000,  found  grapes  growing  there  in  profusion,  and  the  vine  still 
flourishes  in  great  variety  and  abundance  in  the  southeastern  counties  of 
that  State.  The  townships  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Dighton  rock,  supposed 
by  many — with  whom,  however,  I  am  sorry  I  cannot  agree — to  bear  a 
Scandinavian  inscription,  abound  in  wild  vines,  and  I  have  never  seen  a 
region  which  produced  them  so  freely.  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  culti 
vation  of  the  grape  will  become,  at  no  distant  day,  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  branches  of  rural  industry  in  that  district. 


AGRICULTURE    OF   THE   UNITED    STATES.  61 

introduced  by  man  into  the  regions  now  remarkable  for  theif 
most  successful  cultivation,  and  that,  too,  in  comparatively 
recent  times,  or,  in  other  words,  within  two  or  three  centuries. 

Foreign  Plants  grown  in  the  United  States. 

According  to  Bigelow,  the  United  States  had,  on  the  first 
of  June,  1860,  in  round  numbers,  163,000,000  acres  of  im 
proved  land,  the  quantity  having  been  increased  by  50,000,000 
acres  within  the  ten  years  next  preceding.*  Not  to  men 
tion  less  important  crops,  this  land  produced,  in  the  year  end 
ing  on  the  day  last  mentioned,  in  round  numbers,  171,000,000 
bushels  of  wheat,  21,000,000  bushels  of  rye,  172,000,000  bush 
els  of  oats,  15,000,000  bushels  of  pease  and  beans,  16,000,000 
bushels  of  barley,  orchard  fruits  to  the  value  of  $20,000,000, 
000,000  bushels  of  cloverseed,  900,000  bushels  of  other  grass 
seed,  101,000  tons  oTlTemp,  4,000,000  pounds  of  flax,  -and 
600,000  pounds  of  flaxseed.  These  vegetable  growths  were 
familiar  to  ancient  European  agriculture,  but  they  were  all 
introduced  into  North  America  after  the  close  of  the  sixteenth 
century. 

Of  the  fruits  of  agricultural  industry  unknown  to  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  or  too  little  employed  by  them  to  be 
of  any  commercial  importance,  the  United  States  produced, 
in  the  same  year,  187,000,000  pounds  of  rice,  18,000,000  bush 
els  of  buckwheat,  2,075,000,000  pounds  of  ginned  cotton,f 

*  Lcs  Etats  Unix  d'Amerique  en  1863,  p.  360.  By  "  improved  "  land,  in 
the  reports  on  the  census  of  the  United  States,  is  meant  "  cleared  land 
used  for  grazing,  grass,  or  tillage,  or  which  is  now  fallow,  connected  with 
or  belonging  to  a  farm." — Instructions  to  Marshals  and  Assistants,  Census 
0/1850,  schedule  4,  §§  2,  3. 

t  Cotton,  though  cultivated  in  Asia  and  Africa  from  the  remotest  an 
tiquity,  and  known  as  a  rare  and  costly  product  to  the  Latins  and  the 
.Greeks,  was  not  used  by  them  to  any  considerable  extent,  nor  did  it  enter 
into  their  commerce  as  a  regular  article  of  importation.  The  early  voy 
agers  found  it  in  common  use  in  the  West  Indies  and  in  the  provinces  first 
colonized  by  the  Spaniards  ;  but  it  was  introduced  into  the  territory  of  the 
TT^ited  States  by  European  settlers,  and  did  not  become  of  any  importance 


62  AGRICULTURE   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

302,000,000  pounds  of  cane  sugar,  16,000,000  gallons  of  cana 
molasses,  T,000,000  gallons  of  sorghum  molasses,  all  yielded 
by  vegetables  introduced  into  that  country  within  two  hundred 
years,  and — with  the  exception  of  buckwheat,  the  origin  of 
which  is  uncertain,  and  of  cotton — all,  directly  or  indirectly, 
from  the  East  Indies ;  besides,  from  indigenous  plants  unknown 
to  ancient  agriculture,  830,000,000  bushels  of  Indian  corn  or 
maize,  429,000,000  pounds  of  tobacco,  110,000,000  bushels  of 
potatoes,  42,000,000  bushels  of  sweet  potatoes,  39,000,000 
pounds  of  maple  sugar,  and  2,000,000  gallons  of  maple  mo 
lasses.  To  all  this  we  are  to  add  19,000,000  tons  of  hay, 
produced  partly  by  new,  partly  by  long  known,  partly  by 
exotic,  partly  by  native  herbs  and  grasses,  an  incalculable 
quantity  of  garden  vegetables,  chiefly  of  European  or  Asiatic 
origin,  and  many  minor  agricultural  products. 

The  weight  of  this  harvest  of  a  year  would  be  not  less  than 
60,000,000  tons — which  is  eleven  times  the  tonnage  of  all  the 
shipping  of  the  United  States  at  the  close  of  the  year  1861 — 
and,  with  the  exception  of  the  maple  sugar,  the  maple  molas 
ses,  and  the  products  of  the  Western  prairie  lands  and  some 
small  Indian  clearings,  it  was  all  grown  upon  lands  wrested 
from  the  forest  by  the  European  race  within  little  more  than 
two  hundred  years.  The  wants  of  Europe  have  introduced 
into  the  colonies  of  tropical  America  the  sugar  cane,  the  coffee 
plant,  the  orange  and  the  lemon,*  all  of  Oriental  origin,  have 

until  after  the  Revolution.  Cotton  seed  was  sown  in  Virginia  as  early  as 
1621,  but  was  not  cultivated  with  a  view  to  profit  for  more  than  a  century 
afterward.  Sea-island  cotton  was  first  grown  on  the  coast  of  Georgia  in 
1786,  the  seed  having  been  brought  from  the  Bahamas,  where  it  had  been 
introduced  from  Anguilla. — BIGELOW,  Les  Etats  Unis  en  1863,  p.  370. 

*  The  sugar  cane  was  introduced  by  the  Arabs  into  Sicily  and  Spain  as 
early  as  the  ninth  century,  and  though  it  is  now  scarcely  grown  in  those 
localities,  I  am  not  aware  of  any  reason  to  doubt  that  its  cultivation  might 
be  revived  with  advantage.  From  Spain  it  was  carried  to  the  West  Indies, 
though  different  varieties  have  since  been  introduced  into  those  islands 
from  other  sources,  y  Tea  is  now  cultivated  with  a  certain  success  in  Brazil, 
and  promises  to  become  an  important  crop  in  the  Southern  States  of  the 
American  Union.  The  lemon  is,  I  think,  readily  recognizable,  by  Pliny'g 


AMERICAN    PLANTS    IN    EUROPE.  63 

immensely  stimulated  the  cultivation  of  the  former  two  in  the 
countries  of  which  they  are  natives,  and,  of  course,  promoted 
agricultural  operations  which  must  have  affected  the  geogra 
phy  of  those  regions  to  an  extent  proportionate  to  the  scale  on 
which  they  have  been  pursued. 

American  Plants  grown  in  Europe. 

America  has  partially  repaid  her  debt  to  the  Eastern  conti 
nent.  Maize  and  the  potato  are  very  valuable  additions  to 
the  field  agriculture  of  Europe  and  the  East,  and  the  tomato  is 
no  mean  gift  to  the  kitchen  gardens  of  the  Old  World,  though 
certainly  not  an  adequate  return  for  the  multitude  of  esculent 
roots  and  leguminous  plants  which  the  European  colonists 
carried  with  them.*  I  wish  I  could  believe,  with  some,  that 
America  is  not  alone  responsible  for  the  introduction  of  the 
filthy  weed,  tobacco,  the  use  of  which  is  the  most  vulgar  and 
pernicious  habit  engrafted  by  the  serni-barbarisin  of  modem 
civilization  upon  the  less  multifarious  sensualism  of  ancient 
life  ;  f  but  the  alleged  occurrence  of  pipe-like  objects  in  Scla- 

description,  as  known  to  the  ancients,  but  it  does  not  satisfactorily  appear 
that  they  were  acquainted  with  the  orange. 

*  John  Smith  mentions,  in  his  Historic  of  Virginia,  1624,  pease  and 
beans  as  having  been  cultivated  by  the  natives  before  the  arrival  of  the 
whites,  and  there  is  no  doubt,  I  believe,  that  the  pumpkin  and  several 
other  cucurbitaceous  plants  are  of  American^origin  ;  but  most,  if  not  all 
the  varieties  of  pease,  beans,  and  other  pod  fruits  now  grown  in  American 
gardens,  are  from  European  and  other  foreign  seed.  See  Appendix,  No,  8. 

t  There  are  some  usages  of  polite  society  which  are  inherently  low  in 
themselves,  and  debasing  in  their  influence  and  tendency,  and  which  no 
custom  or  fashion  can  make  respectable  or  fit  to  be  followed  by  self- 
respecting  persons.  It  is  essentially  vulgar  to  smoke  or  chew  tobacco,  and 
especially  to  take  snuff;  it  is  unbecoming  a  gentleman  to  perform  the 
duties  of  his  coachman ;  it  is  indelicate  in  a  lady  to  wear  in  the  street 
skirts  so  long  that  she  cannot  walk  without  grossly  soiling  them.  Not 
that  all  these  things  are  not  practised  by  persons  justly  regarded  as  gentle 
men  and  ladies  ;  but  the  same  individuals  would  be,  and  feel  themselves  to 
be,  much  more  emphatically  gentlemen  and  ladies,  if  they  abstained  from 
them. 


64:  INTRODUCTION   OF   NEW  PLANTS. 

voiiic,  and,  it  has  been  said,  in  Hungarian  sepulchres,  is  hardly 
sufficient  evidence  to  convict  those  races  of  complicity  in  this 
grave  offence  against  the  temperance  and  the  refinement  of 
modern  society. 


Modes  of  Introduction  of  Foreign  Plants. 

Besides  the  vegetables  I  have  mentioned,  we  know  that 
many  plants  of  smaller  economical  value  have  been  the  sub 
jects  of  international  exchange  in  very  recent  times.  Bus- 
bequius,  Austrian  ambassador  at  Constantinople  about  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century — whose  letters  contain  one  of 
the  best  accounts  of  Turkish  life  which  have  appeared  down 
to  the  present  day — brought  home  from  the  Ottoman  capital 
the  lilac  and  the  tulip.  The  Belgian  Clusius  about  the  same 
time  introduced  from  the  East  the  horse  chestnut,  which  has 
since  wandered  to  America.  The  weeping  willows  of  Europe 
and  the  United  States  are  said  to  have  sprung  from  a  slip 
received  from  Smyrna  by  the  poet  Pope,  and  planted  by  him 
in  an  English  garden  ;  and  the  Portuguese  declare  that  the 
progenitor  of  all  the  European  and  American  oranges  was  an 
Oriental  tree  transplanted  to  Lisbon,  and  still  living  in  the  last 
generation.*  The  present  favorite  flowers  of  the  parterres  of 

*  The  name  portogallo,  so  generally  applied  to  the  orange  in  Italy, 
seems  to  favor  this  claim.  -The  orange,  however,  was  known  in  Europe 
before  the  discovery  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and,  therefore,  before  the 
establishment  of  direct  relations  between  Portugal  and  the  East. 

A  correspondent  of  the  Athenwum,  in  describing  the  newly  excavated 
villa,  which  has  been  named  Livia's  Villa,  near  the  Porta  del  Popolo  at 
Rome,  states  that :  u  The  walls  of  one  of  the  rooms  are,  singularly  enough, 
decorated  with  landscape  paintings,  a  grove  of  palm  and  orange  trees,  with 
fruits  and  birds  on  the  branches — the  colors  all  as  fresh  and  lively  as  if 
painted  yesterday."  The  writer  remarks  on  the  character  of  this  decora 
tion  as  something  very  unusual  in  Roman  architecture  ;  and  if  the  trees  in 
question  are  really  orange,  and  not  lemon  trees,  this  circumstance  may 
throw  some  doubt  on  the  antiquity  of  the  painting.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  proves  really  ancient,  it  shows  that  the  orange  was  known  to  the  Roman 
painters,  if  not  gardeners.  The  landscape  may  perhaps  represent  Oriental, 


VEGETABLE   POAVER   OF   ACCOMMODATION.  65 

Europe  have  been  imported  from  America,  Japan  and  other 
remote  Oriental  countries,  within  a  century  and  a  half,  and,  in 
fine,  there  are  few  vegetables  of  any  agricultural  importance, 
few  ornamental  trees  or  decorative  plants,  which  are  not  now 
common  to  the  three  civilized  continents. 

The  statistics  of  vegetable  emigration  exhibit  numerical 
results  quite  surprising  to  those  not  familiar  with  the  subject. 
The  lonely  island  of  St.  Helena  is  described  as  producing,  at 
the  time  of  its  discovery  in  the  year  1501,  about  sixty  vege 
table  species,  including  some  three  or  four  known  to  grow 
elsewhere  also.  At  the  present  time  its  flora  numbers  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  species.  Humboldt  and  Bonpland  found, 
among  the  unquestionably  indigenous  plants  of  tropical 
America,  monocotyledons  only,  all  the  dicotyledons  of  those 
extensive  regions  having  been  probably  introduced  after  the 
colonization  of  the  New  AVorld  by  Spain. 

The  faculty  of  spontaneous  reproduction  and  perpetuation 
necessarily  supposes  a  greater  power  of  accommodation,  within 
a  certain  range,  than  wre  find  in  most  domesticated  plants,  for 
it  would  rarely  happen  that  the  seed  of  a  wild  plant  would  fall 
into  ground  as  nearly  similar,  in  composition  and  condition,  to 
that  where  its  parent  grew,  as  the  soils  of  different  fields  arti- 
^cially  prepared  for  growing  a  particular  vegetable  are  to  each 
other.  Accordingly,  though  every  wild  species  aifects  a  hab 
itat  of  a  particular  character,  it  is  found  that,  if  accidentally 
or  designedly  sown  elsewhere,  it  will  grow  under  conditions 
extremely  unlike  those  of  its  birthplace.*  Cooper  says  :  "  We 

not  European  scenery.  The  accessories  of  the  picture  would  probably  de 
termine  that  question. — Atlien&um,  No.  1859,  June  13,  1863. 

MULLER,  Das  Buck  der  Pflanzenwelt,  p.  86,  asserts  that  in  1802  the  an 
cestor  of  all  the  mulberries  in  France,  planted  in  1500,  was  still  standing 
in  a  garden  in  the  village  of  Allan-Montelimart. 

*  The  vegetables  which,  so  far  as  we  know  their  history,  seem  to  have 
been  longest  the  objects  of  humnn  care,  can,  by  painstaking  industry,  be 
made  to  grow  under  a  great  variety  of  circumstances,  and  some  of  them — 
the  vine  for  instance — prosper  nearly  equally  well,  when  planted  and 
tended,  on  soils  of  almost  any  geological  character ;  but  their  seeds  vege 
tate  only  in  artificially  prepared  ground,  they  have  little  self-sustaining 


66  ACCIDENTAL   INTRODUCTION-  OF   PLANTS. 

cannot  say  positively  that  any  plant  is  uncultivable  anywhere 
until  it  Las  been  tried  ; "  and  this  seems  to  be  even  more  true 
of  wild  than  of  domesticated  vegetation. 

The  seven  hundred  new  species  which  have  found  their 
way  to  St.  Helena  within  three  centuries  and  a  half,  were  cer 
tainly  not  all,  or  even  in  the  largest  proportion,  designedly 
planted  there  by  human  art,  and  if  we  were  well  acquainted 
with  vegetable  emigration,  we  should  probably  be  able  to 
show  that  man  has  intentionally  transferred  fewer  plants  than 
he  has  accidentally  introduced  into  countries  foreign  to  them. 
After  the  wheat,  follow  the  tares  that  infest  it.  The  weeds 
that  grow  among  the  cereal  grains,  the  pests  of  the  kitchen 
garden,  are  the  same  in  America  as  in  Europe.*  The  over 
turning  of  a  wagon,  or  any  of  the  thousand  accidents  which 
befall  the  emigrant  in  his  journey  across  the  Western  plains, 
may  scatter  upon  the  ground  the  seeds  he  designed  for  his 
garden,  and  the  herbs  which  fill  so  important  a  place  in  the 
rustic  materia  medica  of  the  Eastern  States,  spring  up  along 
the  prairie  paths  but  just  opened  by  the  caravan  of  the  settler,  f 

power,  and  they  soon  perish  when  the  nursing  hand  of  man  is  withdrawn 
from  them.  In  range  of  climate,  wild  plants  are  much  more  limited  than 
domestic,  but  much  less  so  with  regard  to  the  state  of  the  soil  in  which 
they  germinate  and  grow.  See  Appendix,  No.  9. 

Dr.  Dwight  remarks  that  the  seeds  of  American  forest  trees  will  not 
vegetate  when  dropped  on  grassland.  This  is  one  of  the  very  few  errors 
of  personal  observation  to  he  found  in  that  author's  writings.  There  are 
seasons,  indeed,  when  few  tree  seeds  germinate  in  the  meadows  and  the 
pastures,  and  years  favorable  to  one  species  are  not  always  propitious  to 
another ;  but  there  is  no  American  forest  tree  known  to  me  which  does 
not  readily  propagate  itself  by  seed  in  the  thickest  greensward,  if  its  germs 
are  not  disturbed  by  man  or  animals. 

*  Some  years  ago  I  made  a  collection  of  weeds  in  the  wheatfields  of 
Upper  Egypt,  and  another  in  the  gardens  on  the  Bosphorus.  Nearly  all 
the  plants  were  identical  with  those  which  grow  under  the  same  conditions 
in  New  England.  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  in  America  the  scarlet 
wild  poppy  so  common  in  European  grainfields.  I  have  heard,  however, 
that  it  has  lately  crossed  the  Atlantic,  and  I  am  not  sorry  for  it.  With 
our  abundant  harvests  of  wheat,  we  can  well  afford  to  pay  now  and  then 
a  loaf  of  bread  for  the  cheerful  radiance  of  this  brilliant  flower. 

t  Josselyn,  who  wrote  about  fifty  years  after  the  foundation  of  the  first 


ACCIDENTAL   rNTUODUCTION   OF  PLANTS.  67 

The  hortus  siccus  of  a  botanist  may  accidentally  sow  seeds 
from  the  foot  of  the  Himalayas  on  the  plains  that  skirt  the 
Alps ;  and  it  is  a  fact  of  very  familiar  observation,  that  exotics, 
transplanted  to  foreign  climates  suited  to  their  growth,  often 
escape  from  the  flower  garden  and  naturalize  themselves 
among  the  spontaneous  vegetation  of  the  pastures.  "When 
the  cases  containing  the  artistic  treasures  of  Thorvaldsen  were 
opened  in  the  court  of  the  museum  where  they  are  deposited, 
the  straw  and  grass  employed  in  packing  them  were  scattered 
upon  the  ground,  and  the  next  season  there  sprang  up  from 
the  seeds  no  less  than  twenty-five  species  of  plants  belonging 
to  the  Roman  carnpagna,  some  of  which  were  preserved  and 
cultivated  as  a  new  tribute  to  the  memory  of  the  great  Scan 
dinavian  sculptor,  and  at  least  four  are  said  to  have  spon 
taneously  naturalized  themselves  about  Copenhagen.*  In  the 
campaign  of  1814-,  the  Russian  troops  brought,  in  the  stuffing 
of  their  saddles  and  by  other  accidental  means,  seeds  from  the 
banks  of  the  Dnieper  to  the  valley  of  the  Rhine,  and  even 
introduced  the  plants  of  the  steppes  into  the  environs  of  Paris. 
The  Turkish  armies,  in  their  incursions  into  Europe,  brought 
Eastern  vegetables  in  their  train,  and  left  the  seeds  of  Oriental 
wall  plants  to  grow  upon  the  ramparts  of  Buda  and  Vienna,  f 

British  colony  in  New  England,  says  that  the  settlers  at  Plymouth  had  ob- 
served  more  than  twenty  English  plants  springing  up  spontaneously  near 
their  improvements. 

Every  country  has  many  plants  not  now,  if  ever,  made  use  of  by  man, 
and  therefore  not  designedly  propagated  by  him,  but  which  cluster  around 
his  dwelling,  and  continue  to  grow  luxuriantly  on  the  ruins  of  his  rural 
habitation  after  he  has  abandoned  it.  The  site  of  a  cottage,  the  very  foun 
dation  stones  of  which  have  been  carried  off,  may  often  be  recognized, 
years  afterward,  by  the  rank  weeds  which  cover  it,  though  no  others  of 
the  same  species  are  found  for  miles. 

"Mediaeval  Catholicism,"  says  Vaupell,  "brought  us  the  red  horsehoof 
— whose  reddish-brown  flower  buds  shoot  up  from  the  ground  when  the 
enow  melts,  and  are  followed  by  the  large  leaves — lageJsuituJsMer  and 
snake-root,  which  grow  only  where  there  were  convents  and  other  dwell 
ings  in  the  Middle  Ages." — Bogens  Indcandi  ing  i  de  Danske  Shove,  pp.  1,  2. 

*  VAUPELL,  Bogens  Inxandring  i  de  Danske  Shove,  p.  2. 

t  It  is,  I  believe,  nearly  certain  that  the  Turks  inflicted  tobacco  upon 


68  TENACITY   OF   LIFE   IN   WILD   ORGANISMS. 

The  Canada  thistle,  Erigeron  Canadense,  is  said  to  have 
sprung  up  in  Europe,  two  hundred  years  ago,  from  a  seed 
which  dropped  out  of  the  stuffed  skin  of  a  bird.* 

Vegetables,  how  affected  ly  Transfer  to  Foreign  Soils. 

Vegetables,  naturalized  abroad  either  by  accident  or  design, 
sometimes  exhibit  a  greatly  increased  luxuriance  of  growth. 
The  European  cardoon,  an  esculent  thistle,  has  broken  out 
from  the  gardens  of  the  Spanish  colonies  on  the  La  Plata, 
acquired  a  gigantic  stature,  and  propagated  itself,  in  impen 
etrable  thickets,  over  hundreds  of  leagues  of  the  Pampas  ;  and 
the  Anacharis  alsinastrum,  a  water  plant  not  much  inclined 
to  spread  in  its  native  American  habitat,  has  found  its  way 
into  English  rivers,  and  extended  itself  to  such  a  degree  as  to 
form  a  serious  obstruction  to  the  flow  of  the  current^  and  even 
to  navigation. 

Not  only  do  many  wild  plants  exhibit  a  remarkable  facility 
of  accommodation,  but  their  seeds  usually  possess  great  tena 
city  of  life,  and  their  germinating  power  resists  very  severe 
trials.  Hence,  while  the  seeds  of  very  many  cultivated  vege 
tables  lose  their  vitality  in  two  or  three  years,  and  can  be 
transported  safely  to  distant  countries  only  with  great  precau 
tions,  the  weeds  that  infest  those  vegetables,  though  not  cared 
for  by  man,  continue  to  accompany  him  in  his  migrations,  and 
find  a  new  home  on  every  soil  he  colonizes.  Nature  fights  in 

Hungary,  and  probable  that  they  in  some  measure  compensated  the  injury 
by  introducing  maize  also,  which,  as  well  as  tobacco,  has  been  claimed  as 
Hungarian  by  patriotic  Magyars. 

*  Accidents  sometimes  limit,  as  well  as  promote,  the  propagation  of 
foreign  vegetables  in  countries  new  to  them.  The  Lombardy  poplar  is  a 
dioecious  tree,  and  is  very  easily  grown  from  cuttings.  In  most  of  the 
countries  into  which  it  has  been  introduced  the  cuttings  have  been  taken 
from  the  male,  and  as,  consequently,  males  only  have  grown  from  them, 
the  poplar  does  not  produce  seed  in  those  regions.  This  is  a  fortunate  cir 
cumstance,  for  otherwise  this  most  worthless  and  least  ornamental  of  trees 
would  spread  with  a  rapidity  that  would  make  it  an  annoyance  to  the 
agriculturist.  See  Appendix,  No.  10. 


TENACITY   OF   LIFE   IN   WILD   ANIMALS.'  69 

defence  of  her  free  children,  but  wars  upon  them  when  they 
have  deserted  her  banners  and  tamely  submitted  to  the 
dominion  of  man.* 

Not  only  is  the  wild  plant  much  hardier  than  the  domes 
ticated  vegetable,  but  the  same  law  prevails  in  animated  brute 
and  even  human  life.  The  beasts  of  the  chase  are  more  capa 
ble  of  endurance  and  privation  and  more  tenacious  of  life,  than 
the  domesticated  animals  which  most  nearly  resemble  them. 
The  savage  fights  on,  after  he  has  received  half  a  dozen  mortal 
wounds,  the  least  of  which  would  have  instantly  paralyzed  the 
strength  of  his  civilized  enemy,  and,  like  the  wild  boar,f  he 
has  been  known  to  press  forward  along  the  shaft  of  the  spear 
which  was  transpiercing  his  vitals,  and  to  deal  a  deathblow  on 
the  soldier  who  wielded  it. 

True,  domesticated  plants  can  be  gradually  acclimatized  to 
bear  a  degree  of  heat  or  of  cold,  which,  in  their  wild  state, 
they  would  not  have  supported ;  the  trained  English  racer 
outstrips  the  swiftest  horse  of  the  pampas  or  prairies,  perhaps 
even  the  less  systematically  educated  courser  of  the  Arab  ;  the 
strength  of  the  European,  as  tested  by  the  dynamometer,  is 
greater  than  that  of  the  New  Zealander.  But  all  these  are 
instances  of  excessive  development  of  particular  capacities  and 
faculties  at  the  expense  of  general  vital  power.  Expose 
untamed  and  domesticated  forms  of  life,  together,  to  an  entire 
set  of  physical  conditions  equally  alien  to  the  former  habits  of 
both,  so  that  every  power  of  resistance  and  accommodation 
shall  be  called  into  action,  and  the  wild  plant  or  animal  will 
live,  while  the  domesticated  will  perish. 

The  saline  atmosphere  of  the  sea  is  specially  injurious  both 
to  seeds  and  to  very  many  young  plants,  and  it  is  only  recently 

*  Tempests,  violent  enough  to  destroy  all  cultivated  plants,  often  spare 
those  of  spontaneous  growth.  During  the  present  summer,  I  have  seen  in 
Northern  Italy,  vineyards,  maize  fields,  mulberry  and  fruit  trees  completely 
stripped  of  their  foliage  by  hail,  while  the  forest  trees  scattered  through 
the  meadows,  and  the  shrubs  and  brambles  which  sprang  up  by  the  way 
side,  passed  through  the  ordeal  with  scarcely  the  loss  of  a  leaflet. 

t  The  boar  spear  is  provided  with  a  short  crossbar,  to  enable  the 
hunter  to  keep  the  infuriated  animal  at  bay  after  he  has  transfixed  him. 


70  EXTIRPATION    OF    VEGETABLES. 

that  the  transportation  of  some  very  important  vegetables 
across  the  ocean  lias  been  made  practicable,  through  the 
invention  of  Ward's  airtight  glass  cases.  It  is  by  this  means 
that  large  numbers  of  the  trees  which  produce  the  Jesuit's 
bark  have  been  successfully  transplanted  from  America  to  the 
British  possessions  in  the  East,  where  it  is  hoped  they  will  be 
come  fully  naturalized. 

Extirpation  of  Vegetables. 

Lamentable  as  are  the  evils  produced  by  the  too  general 
felling  of  the  woods  in  the  Old  World,  I  believe  it  does  not 
satisfactorily  appear  that  any  species  of  native  forest  tree  has 
yet  been  extirpated  by  man  on  the  Eastern  continent.  The 
roots,  stumps,  trunks,  and  foliage  found  in  bogs  are  recognized 
as  belonging  to  still  extant  species.  Except  in  some  few  cases 
where  there  is  historical  evidence  that  foreign  material  was 
employed,  the  timber  of  the  oldest  European  buildings,  and 
even  of  the  lacustrine  habitations  of  Switzerland,  is  evidently 
the  product  of  trees  still  common  iri  or  near  the  countries 
where  such  architectural  remains  are  found  ;  nor  have  the 
Egyptian  catacombs  themselves  revealed  to  us  the  former 
existence  of  any  woods  not  now  familiar  to  us  as  the  growth  of 
still  living  trees.*  It  is,  however,  said  that  the  yew  tree, 
Taxus  baccata,  formerly  very  common  in  England,  Germany, 
and — as  we  are  authorized  to  infer  from  Theophrastus — in 
Greece,  has  almost  wholly  disappeared  from  the  latter  country, 
and  seems  to  be  dying  out  in  Germany.  The  wood  of  the 
yew  surpasses  that  of  any  other  European  tree  in  closeness 
and  fineness  of  grain,  and  it  is  well  known  for  the  elasticity 
which  of  old  made  it  so  great  a  favorite  with  the  English 

*  Some  botanists  think  that  a  species  of  water  lily  represented  in  many 
Egyptian  tombs  has  become  extinct,  and  the  papyrus,  which  must  have 
once  been  abundant  in  Egypt,  is  now  found  only  in  a  very  few  localities 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Nile.  It  grows  very  well  and  ripens  its  seeds  in  the 
waters  of  the  Anapus  near  Syracuse,  and  I  have  seen  it  in  garden  ponds  at 
Messina  and  in  Malta,  There  is  no  apparent  reas  in  for  believing  that  it 
could  not  be  easily  cultivated  in  Egypt,  to  any  extent,  if  there  were  any 
special  motive  for  encouraging  its  growth. 


EXTIRPATION   OF   VEGETABLES.  71 

arcliei.  It  is  much  in  request  among  wood  carvers  and  turn 
ers,  and  the  demand  for  it  explains,  in  part,  its  increasing 
scarcity.  It  is  also  worth  remarking  that  no  insect  depends 
upon  it  for  food  or  shelter,  or  aids  in  its  fructification,  no  bird 
feeds  upon  its  berries — the  latter  a  circumstance  of  some 
importance,  because  the  tree  hence  wants  one  means  of  propa 
gation  or  diffusion  common  to  so  many  other  plants.  But  it 
is  alleged  that  the  reproductive  power  of  the  yew  is  exhausted, 
and  that  it  can  no  longer  be  readily  propagated  by  the  natural 
sowing  of  its  seeds,  or  by  artificial  methods.  If  further  inves 
tigation  and  careful  experiment  should  establish  this  fact,  it 
will  go  far  to  show  that  a  climatic  change,  of  a  character  unfa 
vorable  to  the  growth  of  the  yew,  has  really  taken  place  in 
Germany,  though  not  yet  proved  by  instrumental  observation, 
and  the  most  probable  cause  of  such  change  would  be  found 
in  the  diminution  of  the  area  covered  by  the  forests. 

The  industry  of  man  is  said  to  have  been  so  successful  in  tho 
local  extirpation  of  noxious  or  useless  vegetables  in  China,  that, 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  water  plants  in  the  rice  grounds,  it 
is  sometimes  impossible  to  find  a  single  weed  in  an  extensive 
district ;  and  the  late  eminent  agriculturist,  Mr.  Coke,  is  report 
ed  to  have  offered  in  vain  a  considerable  reward  for  the  detection 
of  a  weed  in  a  large  wheatfield  on  his  estate  in  England.  In 
these  cases,  however,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  dili 
gent  husbandry  has  done  more  than  to  eradicate  the  pests  of 
agriculture  within  a  comparatively  limited  area,  and  the  cockle 
and  the  darnel  will  probably  remain  to  plague  the  slovenly 
cultivator  as  long  as  the  cereal  grains  continue  to  bless  him.* 

*  Although  it  is  not  known  that  man  has  extirpated  any  vegetable,  the 
mysterious  diseases  which  have,  for  the  last  twenty  years,  so  injuriously 
affected  the  potato,  the  vine,  the  orange,  the  olive,  and  silk  husbandry — 
whether  in  this  case  the  malady  resides  in  the  mulberry  or  in  the  insect — 
are  ascribed  by  some  to  a  climatic  deterioration  produced  by  excessive  de 
struction  of  the  woods.  As  will  be  seen  in  the  next  chapter,  a  retardation 
in  the  period  of  spring  has  been  observed  in  numerous  localities  in  South 
ern  Europe,  as  well  as  in  the  United  States.  This  change  has  been 
thought  to  favor  the  multiplication  of  the  obscure  parasites  which  cause 
the  injury  to  the  vegetables  just  mentioned. 

Rftbinet  supposes  thfc  pampas  whin];  attack  tho  grape  and  the  potato 


72 


ORIGIN   OF   DOMESTIC   PLANTS. 


Origin  of  Domestic  Plants. 


One  of  the  most  important,  and,  at  the  same  time,  most 
difficult  questions  connected  with  our  subject  is:  how  far  we 
are  to  regard  our  cereal  grains,  our  esculent  bulbs  and  roots, 
and  the  multiplied  tree  fruits  of  our  gardens,  as  artificially 

to  be  animal,  not  vegetable,  and  he  ascribes  their  multiplication  to  exces 
sive  manuring  and  stimulation  of  the  growth  of  the  plants  on  which 
they  live.  They  are  now  generally,  if  not  universally,  regarded  as  vegeta 
ble,  and  if  they  are  so,  Babinet's  theory  would  be  even  more  plausible  than 
on  his  own  supposition. — Etudes  et  Lectures,  ii,  p.  269. 

It  is  a  fact  of  some  interest  in  agricultural  economy,  that  the  oidium, 
which  is  so  destructive  to  the  grape,  has  produced  no  pecuniary  loss  to  the 
proprietors  of  the  vineyards  in  France.  "  The  price  of  wine,"  says  La- 
vergne,  "has  quintupled,  and  as  the  product  of  the  vintage  has  not  dimin 
ished  in  the  same  proportion,  the  crisis  has  been,  on  the  whole,  rather  ad 
vantageous  than  detrimental  to  the  country." — Economic  Rurale  dc  la 
France,  pp.  2G3,  264. 

France  produces  a  considerable  surplus  of  wines  for  exportation,  and 
the  sales  to  foreign  consumers  are  the  principal  source  of  profit  to  French 
vinegrowers.  In  Northern  Italy,  on  the  contrary,  which  exports  little 
wine,  there  has  been  no  such  increase  in  the  price  of  wine  as  to  compen 
sate  the  great  diminution  in  the  yield  of  the  vines,  and  the  loss  of  this  har 
vest  is  severely  felt.  In  Sicily,  however,  which  exports  much  wine,  prices 
have  risen  as  rapidly  as  in  France.  "Waltershausen  informs  us  that  in  the 
years  1838-'42,  the  red  wine  of  Mount  Etna  sold  at  the  rate  of  one 
krenzer  and  a  half,  or  one  cent  the  bottle,  and  sometimes  even  at  but  two 
thirds  that  price,  but  that  at  present  it  commands  five  or  six  times  as 
much. 

The  grape  disease  has  operated  severely  on  small  cultivators  whose 
vineyards  only  furnished  a  supply  for  domestic  use,  but  Sicily  has  received 
a  compensation  in  the  immense  increase  which  it  has  occasioned  in  both 
the  product  and  the  profits  of  the  sulphur  mines.  Flour  of  sulphur  is  ap 
plied  to  the  vine  as  a  remedy  against  the  disease,  and  the  operation  ia 
repeated  from  two  to  three  or  four — and  even,  it  is  said,  eight  or  ten  times — 
in  a  season.  Hence  there  is  a  great  demand  for  sulphur  in  all  the  vine- 
growing  countries  of  Europe,  and  Waltcrshausen  estimates  the  annual 
consumption  of  that  mineral  for  this  single  purpose  at  850,000  centner,  or 
more  than  forty  thousand  tons.  The  price  of  sulphur  has  risen  in  about 
the  same  proportion  as  that  of  wine. — WALTERSHATJSEN,  Ueber  den  Slcil* 
ianiscJien  Ackerltau,  pp.  19,  20. 


ORIGIN    OF   DOMESTIC   PLANTS.  73 

modified  and  improved  forms  of  wild,  self-propagating  vege 
tation.  The  narratives  of  botanical  travellers  have  often 
announced  the  discovery  of  the  original  form  and  habitat  of 
domesticated  plants,  and  scientific  journals  have  described  the 
experiments  by  which  the  identity  of  particular  wild  and  cul 
tivated  vegetables  has  been  thought  to  be  established.  It  is 
confidently  affirmed  that  maize  and  the  potato — which  we 
must  suppose  to  have  been  first  cultivated  at  a  much  latei 
period  than  the  breadstuff's  and  most  other  esculent  vegetables 
of  Europe  and  the  East — are  found  wild  and  self- propagating 
in  Spanish  America,  though  in  forms  not  recognizable  by  the 
common  observer  as  identical  writh  the  familiar  corn  and  tuber 
of  modern  agriculture.  It  was  lately  asserted,  upon  what 
seemed  very  strong  evidence,  that  the  ^Egilops  ovata,  a  plant 
growing  wild  in  Southern  France,  had  been  actually  converted 
into  common  wheat ;  but,  upon  a  repetition  of  the  experi 
ments,  later  observers  have  declared  that  the  apparent  change 
was  only  a  case  of  temporary  hybridation  or  fecundation  by 
the  pollen  of  true  wheat,  and  that  the  grass  alleged  to  be  trans 
formed  into  wheat  could  not  be  perpetuated  as  such  from  its 
owrn  seed. 

The  very  great  modifications  which  cultivated  plants  are 
constantly  undergoing  under  our  eyes,  and  the  numerous 
varieties  and  races  which  spring  up  among  them,  certainly 
countenance  the  doctrine,  that  every  domesticated  vegetable, 
however  dependent  upon  human  care  for  growth  and  propaga 
tion  in  its  present  form,  may  have  been  really  derived,  by  a 
long  succession  of  changes,  from  some  wild  plant  not  now 
much  resembling  it.  But  it  is,  in  every  case,  a  question  of 
evidence.  The  only  satisfactory  proof  that  a  given  wild  plant 
is  identical  with  a  given  garden  or  field  vegetable,  is  the  test 
of  experiment,  the  actual  growing  of  the  one  from  the  seed  of 
the  other,  or  the  conversion  of  the  one  into  the  other  by  trans 
plantation  and  change  of  conditions.  It  is  hardly  contended 
that  any  of  the  cereals  or  other  plants  important  as  human 
aliment,  or  as  objects  of  agricultural  industry,  exist  and  propa 
gate  themselves  uncultivated  in  the  same  form  and  with  the 


T4r  ORIGIN   OF   DOMESTIC   PLANTS. 

same  properties  as  when  sown  and  reared  by  human  art.*  In 
fact,  the  cases  are  rare  where  the  identity  of  a  wild  with  a 
domesticated  plant  is  considered  by  the  best  authorities  as  con 
clusively  established,  and  we  are  warranted  in  affirming  of  but 
few  of  the  latter,  as  a  historically  known  or  experimentally 
proved  fact,  that  they  ever  did  exist,  or  could  exist,  independ 
ently  of  man.f 

*  Some  recent  observations  of  tlie  learned  traveller  Wetzstein  are 
worthy  of  special  notice.  "  The  soil  of  the  Ilaurtm,"  he  remarks, ' '  produces, 
in  its  primitive  condition,  much  wild  rye,  which  is  not  known  as  a  culti 
vated  plant  in  Syria,  and  much  wild  "barley  and  oats.  These  cereals  pre 
cisely  resemble  the  corresponding  cultivated  plants  in  leaf,  ear,  size,  and 
height  of  straw,  but  their  grains  are  sensibly  flatter  and  poorer  in  flour."- 
Reisebericlit  uber  Haurdn  und  die  Trachonen,  p.  40. 

t  This  remark  is  much  less  applicable  to  fruit  trees  than  to  garden  vege 
tables  and  the  cerealia.  The  wild  orange  of  Florida,  though  once  consid 
ered  indigenous,  is  now  generally  thought  by  botanists  to  be  descended 
from  the  European  orange  introduced  by  the  early  colonists.  The  fig  and 
the  olive  are  found  growing  wild  in  every  country  where  those  trees  are 
cultivated.  The  wild  fig  differs  from  the  domesticated  in  its  habits,  its 
season  of  fructification,  and  its  insect  population,  but  is,  I  believe,  not 
specifically  distinguishable  from  the  garden  fig,  though  I  do  not  know  that 
it  is  reclaimable  by  cultivation.  The  wild  olive,  which  is  so  abundant  in 
the  Tuscan  Maremma,  produces  good  fruit  without  further  care,  when 
thinned  out  and  freed  from  the  shade  of  other  trees,  and '  is  particu 
larly  suited  for  grafting.  Sec  SALVAGXOLT,  Memorie  sulle  Maremmc,  pp. 
63-73.  See  Appendix,  No.  12. 

FRAAS,  Klima  und  Pflanzenwelt  in  der  Zeit,  pp.  35-38,  gives,  upon  the 
authority  of  Link  and  other  botanical  writers,  a  list  of  the  native  habitats 
of  most  cereals  and  of  many  fruits,  or  at  least  of  localities  where  these 
plants  are  said  to  be  now  found  wild ;  but  the  data  do  not  appear  to  rest, 
in  general,  upon  very  trustworthy  evidence.  Theoretically,  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  all  our  cultivated  plants  are  modified  forms  of  spontaneous 
vegetation,  but  the  connection  is  not  historically  shown,  nor  are  we  able  to 
say  that  the  originals  of  some  domesticated  vegetables  may  not  be  now  ex 
tinct  and  unrepresented  in  the  existing  wild  flora.  See,  on  this  subject, 
HUMBOLDT,  Ansichten  der  N(ttur,  i,  pp.  208,  209.  The  following  are  inter 
esting  incidents:  "A  negro  slave  of  the  great  Cortez  was  the  first  who 
sowed  wheat  in  New  Spain.  He  found  three  grains  of  it  among  the  rice 
which  had  been  brought  from  Spain  as  food  for  the  soldiers.  In  the  Fran- 
eisenn  monastery  at  Quito,  I  saw  the  earthen  pot  which  contained  the  first 


LIFE   AS    A    GEOLOGICAL    AGENCY.  75 

Organic  Life  as  a  Geological  and  Geographical  Agency. 

The  quantitative  value  of  organic  life,  as  a  geological 
agency,  seems  to  be  inversely  as  the  volume  of  the  individual 
organism  ;  for  nature  supplies  by  numbers  what  is  wanting  in 
the  bulk  of  the  plant  or  animal  out  of  whose  remains  or  struc 
tures  she  forms  strata  covering  whole  provinces,  and  builds 
up  from  the  depths  of  the  sea  large  islands,  if  not  continents. 
There  are,  it  is  true,  near  the  mouths  of  the  great  Siberian 
rivers  which  empty  themselves  into  the  Polar  Sea,  drift  islands 
composed,  in  an  incredibly  large  proportion,  of  the  bones  and 
tusks  of  elephants,  mastodons,  and  other  huge  pachyderms, 
and  many  extensive  caves  in  various  parts  of  the  world  are 
half  filled  with  the  skeletons  of  quadrupeds,  sometimes  lying 
loose  in  the  earth,  sometimes  cemented  together  into  an  osse 
ous  breccia  by  a  calcareous  deposit  or  other  binding  material. 
These  remains  of  large  animals,  though  found  in  comparatively 
late  formations,  generally  belong  to  extinct  species,  and  their 
modern  congeners  or  representatives  do  not  exist  in  sufficient 
numbers  to  be  of  sensible  importance  in  geology  or  in  geog 
raphy  by  the  mere  mass  of  their  skeletons.*  But  the  vegetable 

wheat  sown  there  by  Friar  Jodoco  Rixi,  of  Ghent.  It  was  preserved  as  a 
relic." 

The  Adams  of  modern  botany  and  zoology  have  been  put  to  hard  shifts  in 
finding  names  for  the  multiplied  organisms  which  the  Creator  has  brought 
before  them,  "  to  see  what  they  would  call  them ;"  and  naturalists  and 
philosophers  have  shown  much  moral  courage  in  setting  at  naught  the  laws 
of  philology  in  the  coinage  of  uncouth  words  to  express  scientific  ideas.  It 
is  much  to  be  wished  that  some  bold  neologist  would  devise  English  tech 
nical  equivalents  for  the  German  verwildert,  run-wild,  and  veredelt,  im 
proved  by  cultivation. 

*  Could  the  bones  and  other  relics  of  the  domestic  quadrupeds  destroyed 
by  disease  or  slaughtered  for  human  use  in  civilized  countries  be  collected 
into  large  deposits,  as  obscure  causes  have  gathered  together  those  of  ex 
tinct  animals,  they  would  soon  form  aggregations  which  might  almost  be 
called  mountains.  There  were  in  the  United  States,  in  1860,  as  we  shall 
see  hereafter,  nearly  one  hundred  and  two  millions  of  horses,  black  cattle, 
sheep,  and  swine.  There  are  great  numbers  of  all  the  same  animals  in  the 
British  American  Provinces,  and  in  Mexico,  and  there  are  large  herds  of 


76  LIFE  AS   A   GEOLOGICA^,   AGENCY. 

products  found  with  them,  and,  in  rare  cases,  in  the  stomachs 
of  some  of  them,  are  those  of  yet  extant  plants ;  and  besides 
this  evidence,  the  recent  discovery  of  works  of  human  art, 

•wild  horses  on  the  plains,  and  of  tamed  among  the  independent  Indian 
tribes  of  North  America.  It  would  perhaps  not  be  extravagant  to  suppose 
that  all  these  cattle  may  amount  to  two  thirds  as  many  as  those  of  the 
United  States,  and  thus  we  have  in  North  America  a  total  of  170,000,000 
domestic  quadrupeds  belonging  to  species  introduced  by  European  coloni 
zation,  besides  dogs,  cats,  and  other  four-footed  household  pets  and  pests, 
also  of  foreign  origin. 

If  we  allow  half  a  solid  foot  to  the  skeleton  and  other  slowly  destruc 
tible  parts  of  each  animal,  the  remains  of  these  herds  would  form  a  cubical 
mass  measuring  not  much  short  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  feet  to  the  side, 
or  a  pyramid  equal  in  dimensions  to  that  of  Cheops,  and  as  the  average  life 
of  these  animals  does  not  exceed  six  or  seven  years,  the  accumulations  of 
their  bones,  horns,  hoofs,  and  other  durable  remains  would  amount  to  at 
least  fifteen  times  as  great  a  volume  in  a  single  century.  It  is  true  that 
the  actual  mass  of  solid  matter,  left  by  the  decay  of  dead  domestic  quadru 
peds  and  permanently  added  to  the  crust  of  the  earth,  is  not  so  great  as 
this  calculation  makes  it.  The  greatest  proportion  of  the  soft  parts  of  do 
mestic  animals,  and  even  of  the  bones,  is  soon  decomposed,  through  direct 
consumption  by  man  and  other  carnivora,  industrial  use,  and  employment 
as  manure,  and  enters  into  new  combinations  in  which  its  animal  origin  is 
scarcely  traceable  ;  there  is,  nevertheless,  a  large  annual  residuum,  which, 
like  decayed  vegetable  matter,  becomes  a  part  of  the  superficial  mould ; 
and  in  any  event,  brute  life  immensely  changes  the  form  and  character  of 
the  superficial  strata,  if  it  does  not  sensibly  augment  the  quantity  of  the 
matter  composing  them. 

The  remains  of  man,  too,  add  to  the  earthy  coating  that  covers  the 
face  of  the  globe.  The  human  bodies  deposited  in  the  catacombs  during 
the  long,  long  ages  of  Egyptian  history,  would  perhaps  build  as  large  a 
pile  as  one  generation  of  the  quadrupeds  of  the  United  States.  In  the 
barbarous  days  of  old  Moslem  warfare,  the  conquerors  erected  large  pyra 
mids  of  human  skulls.  The  soil  of  cemeteries  in  the  great  cities  of  Europe 
has  sometimes  been  raised  several  feet  by  the  deposit  of  the  dead  during  a 
few  generations.  In  the  East,  Turks  and  Christians  alike  bury  bodies  but 
a  couple  of  feet  beneath  the  surface.  The  grave  is  respected  as  long  as  the 
tombstone  remains,  but  the  sepultures  of  the  ignoble  poor,  and  of  those 
whose  monuments  time  or  accident  has  removed,  are  opened  again  and 
again  to  receive  fresh  occupants.  Hence  the  ground  in  Oriental  cemeteries 
is  pervaded  with  relics  of  humanity,  if  not  wholly  composed  of  them;  and 
.in  examination  of  the  soil  of  the  lower  part  of  the  Petit  Chomp  des  MorU 


GEOGRAPHICAL  IMPORTANCE  OF  ANIMALS.          77 

deposited  in  juxtaposition  with  fossil  bones,  and  evidently  at 
the  same  time  and  by  the  same  agency  which  buried  these 
latter — not  to  speak  of  alleged  human  bones  found  in  the  same 
strata — proves  that  the  animals  whose  former  existence  they 
testify  were  contemporaneous  with  man,  and  possibly  even 
extirpated  by  him.*  I  do  not  propose  to  enter  upon  the 
thorny  question,  whether  the  existing  races  of  man  are  genea 
logically  connected  with  these  ancient  types  of  humanity,  and 
I  advert  to  these  facts  only  for  the  sake  of  the  suggestion,  that 
man,  in  his  earliest  known  stages  of  existence,  was  probably 
a  destructive  power  upon  the  earth,  though  perhaps  not  so 
emphatically  as  his  present  representatives. 

The  larger  wild  animals  are  not  now  numerous  enough  in 
any  one  region  to  form  extensive  deposits  by  their  remains ; 
but  they  have,  nevertheless,  a  certain  geographical  importance. 

at  Pera,  by  the  naked  eye  alone,  shows  the  observer  that  it  consists  almost 
exclusively  of  the  comminuted  bones  of  his  fellow  man. 

*  It  is  asserted  that  the  bones  of  mammoths  and  mastodons,  in  many 
instances,  appear  to  have  been  grazed  or  cut  by  flint  arrow-heads  or  other 
Btone  weapons.  These  accounts  have  often  been  discredited,  because  it 
has  been  assumed  that  the  extinction  of  these  aninmls  was  more  ancient 
than  the  existence  of  man.  Kecent  discoveries  render  it  highly  probable, 
if  not  certain,  that  this  conclusion  has  been  too  hastily  adopted.  Lyell 
observes  :  "  These  stories  *  *  must  in  future  be  more  carefully  inquired 
into,  for  we  can  scarcely  doubt  that  the  mastodon  in  North  America  lived 
down  to  a  period  when  the  mammoth  coexisted  with  man  in  Europe." — 
Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  354. 

On  page  143  of  the  volume  just  quoted,  the  same  very  distinguished 
writer  remarks  that  man  "  no  doubt  played  his  part  in  hastening  the  era 
of  the  extinction "  of  the  large  pachyderms  and  beasts  of  prey ;  but,  as 
contemporaneous  species  of  other  animals,  which  man  cannot  be  supposed 
to  have  extirpated,  have  also  become  extinct,  he  argues  that  the  disap 
pearance  of  the  quadrupeds  in  question  cannot  be  ascribed  to  human 
action  alone. 

On  this  point  it  may  be  observed  that,  as  we  cannot  know  what  precise 
physical  conditions  were  necessary  to  the  existence  of  a  given  extinct  or 
ganism,  we  cannot  say  how  far  such  conditions  may  have  been  modified 
by  the  action  of  man,  and  he  may  therefore  have  influenced  the  life  of 
such  organisms  in  ways,  and  to  an  extent,  of  which  we  can  form  no 
just  idea. 


78  ACTION   OF   WILD   ANIMALS    ON    VEGETATION. 

If  the  myriads  of  large  browsing  and  grazing  quadrupeds 
which  wander  over  the  plains  of  Southern  Africa — and  the 
slaughter  of  which  by  thousands  is  the  source  of  a  ferocious 
pleasure  and  a  brutal  triumph  to  professedly  civilized  hunters 
— if  the  herds  of  the  American  bison,  which  are  numbered  by 
hundreds  of  thousands,  do  not  produce  visible  changes  in  the 
forms  of  terrestrial  surface,  they  have  at  least  an  immense 
influence  on  the  growth  and  distribution  of  vegetable  life,  and, 
of  course,  indirectly  upon  all  the  physical  conditions  of  soil 
and  climate  between  which  and  vegetation  a  mutual  inter 
dependence  exists. 

The  influence  of  wild  quadrupeds  upon  vegetable  life  has 
been  little  studied,  and  not  many  facts  bearing  upon  it  have 
been  recorded,  but,  so  far  as  it  is  known,  it  appears  to  be  con 
servative  rather  than  pernicious.*  Few  if  any  of  them  depend 
for  their  subsistence  on  vegetable  products  obtainable  only  by 
the  destruction  of  the  plant,  and  they  seem  to  confine  their 
consumption  almost  exclusively  to  the  annual  harvest  of  leaf 
or  twig,  or  at  least  of  parts  of  the  vegetable  easily  reproduced. 
If  there  are  exceptions  to  this  rule,  they  are  in  cases  where  the 
numbers  of  the  animal  are  so  proportioned  to  the  abundance 
of  the  vegetable,  that  there  is  no  danger  of  the  extermination 
of  the  plant  from  the  voracity  of  the  quadruped,  or  of  the 
extinction  of  the  quadruped  from  the  scarcity  of  the  plant. 
In  diet  and  natural  wants  the  bison  resembles  the  ox,  the  ibex 

*  Evelyn  thought  the  depasturing  of  grass  by  cattle  serviceable  to  its 
growth.  "  The  biting  of  cattle,"  he  remarks,  "gives  a  gentle  loosening  to 
the  roots  of  the  herbage,  and  makes  it  to  grow  fine  and.  sweet,  and  their 
very  breath  and  treading  as  well  as  soil,  and  the  comfort  of  their  warm 
bodies,  is  wholesome  and  marvellously  cherishing." — Terra,  or  Philosoph 
ical  Discourse  of  Earth,  p.  36. 

In  a  note  upon  this  passage,  Hunter  observes :  "  Nice  farmers  con 
sider  the  lying  of  a  beast  upon  the  ground,  for  one  night  only,  as  a  suffi 
cient  tilth  for  the  year.  The  breath  of  graminivorous  quadrupeds  does 
certainly  enrich  the  roots  of  grass  ;  a  circumstance  worthy  of  the  attention 
of  the  philosophical  farmer." — Terra,  same  page. 

The  "philosophical  farmer"  of  the  present  day  will  not  adopt  thesa 
opinions  without  some  qualification. 


DOMESTIC   ANIMALS.  79 

and  the  chamois  assimilate  themselves  to  the  goat  and  the 
sheep ;  but  while  the  wild  animal  does  not  appear  to  be  a 
destructive  agency  in  the  garden  of  nature,  his  domestic  con 
geners  are  eminently  so.  This  is  partly  from  the  change  of 
habits  resulting  from  domestication  and  association  with  man, 
partly  from  the  fact  that  the  number  of  reclaimed  animals  is 
not  determined  by  the  natural  relation  of  demand  and  spon 
taneous  supply  which  regulates  the  multiplication  of  wild 
creatures,  but  by  the  convenience  of  man,  who  is,  in  compara 
tively  few  things,  amenable  to  the  control  of  the  merely  phys 
ical  arrangements  of  nature.  When  the  domesticated  animal 

O 

escapes  from  human  jurisdiction,  as  in  the  case  of  the  ox,  the 
horse,  the  goat,  and  perhaps  the  ass — which,  so  far  as  I  know, 
are  the  only  well-authenticated  instances  of  the  complete 
emancipation  of  household  quadrupeds — he  becomes  again  an 
unresisting  subject  of  nature,  and  all  his  economy  is  governed 
by  the  same  laws  as  that  of  his  fellows  which  have  never  been 
enslaved  by  man ;  but,  so  long  as  he  obeys  a  human  lord,  he 
is  an  auxiliary  in  the  warfare  his  master  is  ever  waging  against 
all  existences  except  those  which  he  can  tame  to  a  willing 
servitude. 

Number  of  Quadrupeds  in  the  United  States. 

Civilization  is  so  intimately  associated  with,  if  not  depend 
ent  upon,  certain  inferior  forms  of  animal  life,  that  cultivated 
man  has  never  failed  to  accompany  himself,  in  all  his  migra 
tions,  with  some  of  these  humble  attendants.  The  ox,  the  horse, 
the  sheep,  and  even  the  comparatively  useless  dog  and  cat,  as 
well  as  several  species  of  poultry,  are  voluntarily  transported 
by  every  emigrant  colony,  and  they  soon  multiply  to  numbers 
very  far  exceeding  those  of  the  wild  genera  most  nearly  corre 
sponding  to  them."-  According  to  the  census  of  the  United 

*  The  rat  and  the  mouse,  though  not  voluntarily  transported,  are  pas 
sengers  by  every  ship  that  sails  from  Europe  to  a  foreign  port,  and  several 
species  of  these  quadrupeds  have,  consequently,  much  extended  their 
range  and  increased  their  numbers  in  modern  times.  From  a  story  of 
Heliogabalus  related  by  Lampridius,  Hist.  Aug.  Scriptores,  ed.  Casauboc, 


80  NUMBER    OF    QUADRUPEDS    IN   THE    UNITED    STATES. 

States  for  I860,*  the  total  number  of  horses  in  all  the  States 
of  the  American  Union,  was,  in  round  numbers,  7,300,000 ; 
of  asses  and  mules,  1,300,000;  of  the  ox  tribe,  29,000,000  ;f  of 
sheep,  25,000,000  ;  and  of  swine,  39,000,000.  The  only  North 

1690,  p.  110,  it  would  seem  that  mice  at  least  were  not  very  common  in 
ancient  Rome.  Among  the  capricious  freaks  of  that  emperor,  it  is  said 
that  lie  undertook  to  investigate  the  statistics  of  the  arachnoid  population 
of  the  capital,  and  that  10,000  pounds  of  spiders  (or  spiders'  webs — for 
aranea  is  equivocal)  were  readily  collected  ;  but  when  he  got  up  a  mouse 
show,  he  thought  ten  thousand  mice  a  very  fair  number.  I  believe  as 
many  might  almost  be  found  in  a  single  palace  in  modern  Rome.  Rats  are 
not  less  numerous  in  all  great  cities,  and  in  Paris,  where  their  skins  are 
used  for  gloves,  and  their  flesh,  it  is  whispered,  in  some  very  complex  and 
equivocal  dishes,  they  are  caught  by  legions.  I  have  read  of  a  manufac 
turer  who  contracted  to  buy  of  the  rat  catchers,  at  a  high  price,  all  the 
rat  skins  they  could  furnish  before  a  certain  date,  and  failed,  within  a  week, 
for  want  of  capital,  when  the  stock  of  peltry  had  run  up  to  600,000. 

*  BIGELOW,  Les  fitats  Uhis  en  1863,  pp.  379,  380.  In  the  same  para 
graph  this  volume  states  the  number  of  animals  slaughtered  in  the  United 
States  by  butchers,  in  1859,  at  212,871,653.  This  is  an  error  of  the  press. 
Number  is  confounded  with  value.  A  reference  to  the  tables  of  the  census 
shows  that  the  animals  slaughtered  that  year  were  estimated  at  212,871,653 
dollars  ;  the  number  of  head  is  not  given.  The  wild  horses  and  horned 
cattle  of  the  prairies  and  the  horses  of  the  Indians  are  not  included  in 
the  returns. 

t  Of  this  total  number,  2,240,000,  or  nearly  nine  per  cent.,  are  reported 
as  working  oxen.  This  would  strike  European,  and  especially  English 
agriculturists,  as  a  large  proportion  ;  but  it  is  explained  by  the  difference 
between  a  new  country  and  an  old,  in  the  conditions  which  determine  the 
employment  of  animal  labor.  Oxen  are  very  generally  used  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada  for  hauling  timber  and  firewood  through  and  from  the 
forests ;  for  ploughing  in  ground  still  full  of  rocks,  stumps,  and  roots  ;  for 
breaking  up  the  new  soil  of  the  prairies  with  its  strong  matting  of  native 
grasses,  and  for  the  transportation  of  heavy  loads  over  the  rough  roads  of 
the  interior.  In  all  these  cases,  the  frequent  obstructions  to  the  passage 
of  the  timber,  the  plough,  and  the  sled  or  cart,  are  a  source  of  constant 
danger  to  the  animals,  the  vehicles,  and  the  harness,  and  the  slow  and 
steady  step  of  the  ox  is  attended  with  much  less  risk  than  the  swift  and 
sudden  movements  of  the  impatient  horse.  It  is  surprising  to  see  the 
sagacity  with  which  the  dull  and  clumsy  ox — hampered  as  he  is  by  the 
rigid  yoke,  the  most  absurd  implement  of  draught  ever  contrived  by  man- 
picks  his  way,  when  once  trained  to  forest  work,  among  rocks  and  roots, 


NUMBERS    OF   WILD   QUADRUPEDS.  81 

American  quadruped  sufficiently  gregarious  in  habits,  and  suffi 
ciently  multiplied  in  numbers,  to  form  really  large  herds,  is  the 
bison,  or,  as  he  is  commonly  called  in  America,  the  buffalo  ;  and 
this  animal  is  confined  to  the  prairie  region  of  the  Mississippi 
basin  and  Northern  Mexico.  The  engineers  sent  out  to  survey 
railroad  routes  to  the  Pacific  estimated  the  number  of  a  single 
herd  of  bisons  seen  within  the  last  ten  years  on  the  great  plains 
near  the  Upper  Missouri,  at  not  less  than  200,000,  and  yet  the 
range  occupied  by  this  animal  is  now  very  much  smaller  in 
area  than  it  was  when  the  whites  first  established  themselves 
on  the  prairies.*  But  it  must  be  remarked  that  the  American 
buffalo  is  a  migratory  animal,  and  that,  at  the  season  of  his 
annual  journeys,  the  whole  stock  of  a  vast  extent  of  pasture 
ground  is  collected  into  a  single  army,  which  is  seen  at  or 
very  near  any  one  point  only  for  a  few  days  during  the  entire 
season.  Hence  there  is  risk  of  great  error  in  estimating  the 
numbers  of  the  bison  in  a  given  district  from  the  magnitude 
of  the  herds  seen  at  or  about  the  same  time  at  a  single  place 
of  observation  ;  and,  upon  the  whole,  it  is  neither  proved  nor 
probable  that  the  bison  was  ever,  at  any  one  time,  as  numerous 
in  ]Srorth  America  as  the  domestic  bovine  species  is  at  present. 
The  elk,  the  moose,  the  musk  ox,  the  caribou,  and  the  smaller 
quadrupeds  popularly  embraced  under  the  general  name  of 
deer,f  though  sufficient  for  the  wants  of  a  sparse  savage  popu- 

and  even  climbs  over  fallen  trees,  not  only  moving  safely,  but  drawing 
timber  over  ground  wholly  impracticable  for  the  light  and  agile  horse. 

Cows,  so  constantly  employed  for  draught  in  Italy,  are  never  yoked  or 
otherwise  used  for  labor  in  America,  except  in  the  Slave  States. 

*  "About  five  miles  from  camp  we  ascended  to  the  top  of  a  high  hill, 
and  for  a  great  distance  ahead  every  square  mile  seemed  to  have  a  herd  of 
buffalo  upon  it.  Their  number  Avas  variously  estimated  by  the  members 
of  the  party  ;  by  some  as  high  as  half  a  million.  I  do  not  think  it  any  exag 
geration  to  set  it  down  at  200,000." — STEVEXS'S  Narrative  and  Final  Re 
port.  Reports  of  Explorations  and  Surveys  for  Railroad  to  Pacific,  vol.  xii, 
Look  i,  1860. 

r^he  next  day,  the  party  fell  in  with  a  "  buffalo  trail,"  where  at  least 
100,000  were  thought  to  have  crossed  a  slough. 

t  The  mo.st  zealous  and  successful  New  England  hunter  of  whom  I  have 


82  ORIGIN    OF    DOMESTIC    QUADKUPEDS. 

lation,  were  never  numerically  very  abundant,  and  the  car- 
nivora  which  fed  upon  them  were  still  less  so.  It  is  almost 
needless  to  add  that  the  Rocky  Mountain  sheep  and  goat  must 
always  have  been  very  rare. 

Summing  up  the  whole,  then,  it  is  evident  that  the  wild 
quadrupeds  of  North  America,  even  when  most  numerous, 
were  few  compared  with  their  domestic  successors,  that  they 
required  a  much  less  supply  of  vegetable  food,  and  conse 
quently  were  far  less  important  as  geographical  elements  than 
the  many  millions  of  hoofed  and  horned  cattle  now  fed  by 
civilized  man  on  the  same  continent. 

Origin  and  Transfer  of  Domestic  Quadrupeds. 

Of  the  origin  of  our  domestic  animals,  we  know  histor 
ically  nothing,  because  their  domestication  belongs  to  the  ages 
which  preceded  written  history  *,  but  though  they  cannot  all 
be  specifically  identified  with  now  extant  wild  animals,  it  is 
presumable  that  they  have  been  reclaimed  from  an  originally 
wild  state.  Ancient  annalists  have  preserved  to  us  fewer  data 
respecting  the  introduction  of  domestic  animals  into  new  coun 
tries  than  respecting  the  transplantation  of  domestic  vegetables. 
Hitter,  in  his  learned  essay  on  the  camel,  has  shown  that  this 
animal  was  not  employed  by  the  Egyptians  until  a  compara 
tively  late  period  in  their  history  ;  that  he  was  unknown  to 
the  Carthaginians  until  after  the  downfall  of  their  common 
wealth  ;  and  that  his  first  appearance  in  Western  Africa  is 
more  recent  still.  The  Bactrian  camel  was  certainly  brought 

any  personal  knowledge,  and  who  continued  to  indulge  his  favorite  passion 
much  beyond  the  age  which  generally  terminates  exploits  in  woodcraft, 
lamented  on  his  deathbed  that  he  had  not  lived  long  enough  to  carry  up 
the  record  of  his  slaughtered  deer  to  the  number  of  one  thousand,  which 
he  had  fixed  as  the  limit  of  his  ambition.  He  was  able  to  handle  the  rifle, 
for  sixty  years,  at  a  period  when  the  game  was  still  nearly  as  abundant  as 
ever,  but  had  killed  only  nine  hundred  and  sixty  of  these  quadrupeds,  of 
all  species.  The  exploits  of  this  Nimrod  have  been  far  exceeded  by  prairie 
hunters,  but  I  doubt  whether,  in  the  originally  wooded  territory  of  the 
Union,  any  single  mnrksman  has  brought  down  a  larger  number. 


INTRODUCTION   OF   DOMESTIC   QUADRUPEDS.  83 

from  Asia  Minor  to  the  Northern  shores  of  the  Black  Sea,  by 
the  Goths,  in  the  third  or  fourth  century.*  The  Arabian 
single-humped  camel,  or  dromedary,  has  been  carried  to  the 
Canary  Islands,  partially  introduced  into  Australia,  Greece, 
Spain,  and  even  Tuscany,  experimented  upon  to  little  purpose 
in  Venezuela,  and  finally  imported  by  the  American  Govern 
ment  into  Texas  and  New  Mexico,  where  it  finds  the  climate 
and  the  vegetable  products  best  suited  to  its  wants,  and  prom 
ises  to  become  a  very  useful  agent  in  the  promotion  of  the 
special  civilization  for  which  those  regions  are  adapted. 
America  had  no  domestic  quadruped  but  a  species  of  dog,  the , 
lama  tribe,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  bison  or  buffalo.f  Of 
course,  it  owes  the  horse,  the  ass,  the  ox,  the  sheep,  the  goat, 
and  the  swine,  as  does  also  Australia,  to  European  coloniza 
tion.  Modern  Europe  has,  thus  far,  not  accomplished  much 
in  the  way  of  importation  of  new  animals,  though  some  inter 
esting  essays  have  been  made.  The  reindeer  was  successfully 
introduced  into  Iceland  about  a  century  ago,  while  similar 
attempts  failed,  about  the  same  time,  in  Scotland.  The  Cash 
mere  or  Thibet  goat  was  brought  to  France  a  generation  since, 
and  succeeds  well.  The  same  or  an  allied  species  and  the 
Asiatic  buffalo  were  carried  to  South  Carolina  about  the  year 
1850,  and  the  former,  at  least,  is  thought  likely  to  prove  of 
permanent  value  in  the  United  States.  The  yak,  or  Tartary  ox, 
seems  to  thrive  in  France,  and  success  has  attended  the  recent 
efforts  to  introduce  the  South  American  alpaca  into  Europe. 

*  Erdkunde,  viii,  Asien,  Iste  Abtheilung,  pp.  660,  T58. 

t  See  chapter  iii,  post ;  also  HUMBOLDT,  Ansichten  der  Natur,  i,  p.  71. 
From  the  anatomical  character  of  the  bones  of  the  urus,  or  auerochs, 
found  among  the  relics  of  the  lacustrine  population  of  ancient  Switzerland, 
and  from  other  circumstances,  it  is  inferred  that  this  animal  had  been  do 
mesticated  by  that  people  ;  and  it  is  stated,  I  know  not  upon  what  author 
ity,  in  Le  Alpi  c?ie  cingono  V Italia,  that  it  had  been  tamed  by  the  Yeneti 
also.  See  LTELL,  Antiquity  of  Man,  pp.  24,  25,  and  the  last-named  work, 
p.  489.  This  is  a  fact  of  much  interest,  because  it  is,  I  believe,  the  only 
known  instance  of  the  extinction  of  a  domestic  quadruped,  and  the  extreme 
improbability  of  such  an  event  gives  some  countenance  to  the  theory  of 
the  identity  of  the  domestic  ox  with,  and  its  descent  from,  the  urus. 


84.  NUMBERS   OF   WILD    ANIMALS. 

Extirpation  of  Quadrupeds. 

Although  man  never  fails  greatly  to  diminish,  and  is  per 
haps  destined  ultimately  to  exterminate,  such  of  the  larger  wild 
quadrupeds  as  he  cannot  profitably  domesticate,  yet  their  num 
bers  often  fluctuate,  and  even  after  they  seem  almost  extinct, 
they  sometimes  suddenly  increase,  without  any  intentional 
steps  to  promote  such  a  result  on  his  part.  During  the  wara 
which  followed  the  French  Revolution,  the  wolf  multiplied  in 
many  parts  of  Europe,  partly  because  the  hunters  were  with 
drawn  from  the  woods  to  chase  a  nobler  game,  and  partly 
because  the  bodies  of  slain  men  and  horses  supplied  this  vora 
cious  quadruped  with  more  abundant  food.  The  same  animal 
became  again  more  numerous  in  Poland  after  the  general  dis 
arming  of  the  rural  population  by  the  Russian  Government. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  the  hunters  pursue  the  wolf,  the 
graminivorous  wild  quadrupeds  increase,  and  thus  in  turn  pro 
mote  the  multiplication  of  their  great  four-footed  destroyer  by 
augmenting  the  supply  of  his  nourishment.  So  long  as  the 
fur  of  the  beaver  was  extensively  employed  as  a  material  for 
fine  hats,  it  bore  a  very  high  price,  and  the  chase  of  this  quad 
ruped  was  so  keen  that  naturalists  feared  its  speedy  extinction. 
When  a  Parisian  manufacturer  invented  the  silk  hat,  whicli 
soon  came  into  almost  universal  use,  the  demand  for  beavers' 
fur  fell  off,  and  this  animal — whose  habits,  as  we  have  seen,  are 
an  important  agency  in  the  formation  of  bogs  and  other  modi 
fications  of  forest  nature — immediately  began  to  increase,  reap 
peared  in  haunts  which  he  had  long  abandoned,  and  can  no 
longer  be  regarded  as  rare  enough  to  be  in  immediate  danger 
of  extirpation.  Thus  the  convenience  or  the  caprice  of  Parisian 
fashion  has  unconsciously  exercised  an  influence  which  may 
sensibly  affect  the  physical  geography  of  a  distant  continent. 

Since  the  invention  of  gunpowder,  some  quadrupeds  have 
completely  disappeared  from  many  European  and  Asiatic 
countries  where  they  were  formerly  numerous.  The  last  wolf 
was  killed  in  Great  Britain  two  hundred  years  ago,  and  the 
bear  was  extirpated  from  that  island  still  earlier.  The  British 


EXTIRPATION    OF   WILD    ANIMALS.  85 

wild  ox  exists  only  in  a  few  English  and  Scottish  parks,  while 
in  Irish  bogs,  of  no  great  apparent  antiquity,  arc  found  antlers 
which  testify  to  the  former  existence  of  a  stag  much  larger 
than  any  extant  European  species.  The  lion  is  believed  to 
have  inhabited  Asia  Minor  and  Syria,  and  probably  Greece 
and  Sicily  also,  long  after  the  commencement  of  the  historical 
period,  and  he  is  even  said  to  have  been  not  yet  extinct  in  the 
first-named  two  of  these  countries  at  the  time  of  the  first  Cru 
sades.*  Two  large  graminivorous  or  browsing  quadrupeds, 
the  ur  and  the  schelk,  once  common  in  Germany,  are  utterly 
extinct,  the  eland  and  the  auerochs  nearly  so.  The  Nibelun- 
gen-Lied,  which,  in  the  oldest  form  preserved  to  us,  dates  from 
about  the  year  1,200,  though  its  original  composition  no  doubt 
belongs  to  an  earlier  period,  thus  sings  : 

Cbett  slofoe  flje  bohjgbtie  Higfrib  it  foiaeni  anb  ait  tlk, 

f),e  smote  four  stoat*  nr0.«n  Hub  n  grim  anb  siiubie  stjjclh.f 

Modern  naturalists  identify  the  elk  with  the  eland,  the  wisent 
with  the  auerochs.  The  period  when  the  ur  and  the  schelk 
became  extinct  is  not  known.  The  auerochs  survived  in 
Prussia  until  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  but  unless  it  is 
identical  with  a  similar  quadruped  said  to  be  found  on  the 
Caucasus,  it  now  exists  only  in  the  Russian  imperial  forest  of 

*  In  maintaining  the  recent  existence  of  the  lion  in  the  countries 
named  in  the  text,  naturalists  have,  perhaps,  laid  too  muck  weight  on  the 
frequent  occurrence  of  representations  of  this  animal  in  sculptures  appar 
ently  of  a  historical  character.  It  will  not  do  to  argue,  twenty  centuries 
hence,  that  the  lion  and  the  unicorn  were  common  in  Great  Britain  in 
Queen  Victoria's  time,  because  they  are  often  seen  "fighting  for  the 
crown  "  in  the  carvings  and  paintings  of  that  period. 

t  §at  M£fe  s%cr  scjjhrc.  tmcit  fctsenl  fmi  clclj.  - 
^uircber  bore  toicrc.  bui  rinxit  grimnwt  sejjelcjr. 

XVI  Auentiure. 

The  testimony  of  the  Nibelung 'en-Lied  is  not  conclusive  evidence  that 
these  quadrupeds  existed  in  Germany  at  the  time  of  the  composition  of 
that  poem.  It  proves  too  much  ;  for,  a  few  lines  above  those  just  quoted, 
Sigfrid  is  said  to  have  killed  a  lion,  an  animal  which  the  most  patriotic 
Teuton  will  hardly  claim  as  a  denizen  of  mediaeval  Germany. 


86  DOMESTIC    FOWLS THE    WILD    PIGEON. 

Bialowitz,  where  about  a  thousand  are  still  preserved,  and  in 
some  great  menageries,  as  for  example  that  at  Schonbrunn, 
near  Vienna,  which,  in  1852,  had  four  specimens.  The  eland, 
which  is  closely  allied  to  the  American  wapiti,  if  not  specific 
ally  the  same  animal,  is  still  kept  in  the  royal  preserves  of 
Prussia,  to  the  number  of  four  or  'five  hundred  individuals. 
The  chamois  is  becoming  rare,  and  the  ibex  or  steinbock,  once 
common  in  all  the  high  Alps,  is  now  believed  to  be  confined 
to  the  Cogne  mountains  in  Piedmont,  between  the  valleys  of 
the  Dora  Baltea  and  the  Oreo. 

Number  of  Birds  in  the  United  States. 

The  tame  fowls  play  a  much  less  conspicuous  part  in  rural 
life  than  the  quadrupeds,  and,iii  their  relations  to  the  economy 
of  nature,  they  are  of  very  much  less  moment  than  four-footed 
animals,  or  than  the  undomesticated  birds.  The  domestic 
turkey  *  is  probably  more  numerous  in  the  territory  of;  the 
United  States  than  the  wild  bird  of  the  same  species  ever  was, 
and  the  grouse  cannot,  at  the  period  of  their  greatest  abun 
dance,  have  counted  as  many  as  we  now  number  of  the  com 
mon  hen.  The  dove,  however,  must  fall  greatly  short  of  the 
wild  pigeon  in  multitude,  and  it  is  hardly  probable  that  the 
flocks  of  domestic  geese  and  ducks  are  as  numerous  as  once 
were  those  of  their  wild  congeners.  The  pigeon,  indeed, 
seems  to  haVe  multiplied  immensely,  for  some  years  after  the 
first  clearings  in  the  woods,  because  the  settlers  warred  unspar 
ingly  upon  the  hawk,  while  the  crops  of  grain  and  other  vege 
table  growths  increased  the  supply  of  food  within  the  reach  of 
the  young  birds,  at  the  age  when  their  power  of  flight  is  not 

*  The  wild  turkey  takes  readily  to  the  water,  and  is  able  to  cross  rivers 
of  very  considerable  width  by  swimming.  By  way  of  giving  me  an  idea  of 
the  former  abundance  of  this  bird,  an  old  and  highly  respectable  gentle 
man  who  was  among  the  early  white  settlers  of  the  West,  told  me  that  he 
once  counted,  in  walking  down  the  northern  bank  of  the  Ohio  River,  within 
a  distance  of  four  miles,  eighty-four  turkeys  as  they  landed  singly,  or  at 
most  in  pairs,  after  swimming  over  from  the  Kentucky  side. 


INFLUENCE  OF  BIRDS  ON  VEGETATION — AS  SEED-SOWERS.         87 

yet  great  enough,  to  enable  them  to  seek  it  over  a  wide  area.* 
The  pigeon  is  not  described  by  the  earliest  white  inhabitants 
of  the  American  States  as  filling  the  air  with  such  clouds  of 
winged  life  as  astonish  naturalists  in  the  descriptions  of  Au- 
dubon,  and,  at  the  present  day,  the  net  and  the  gun  have  so 
reduced  its  abundance,  that  its  appearance  in  large  numbers  is 
recorded  only  at  long  intervals,  and  it  is  never  seen  in  the 
great  flocks  remembered  by  many  still  living  observers  as 
formerly  very  common. 


Birds  as  Sowers  and  Consumers  of  Seeds,  and  as 
Destroyers  of  Insects. 

Wild  birds  form  of  themselves  a  very  conspicuous  and 
interesting  feature  in  the  staffage,  as  painters  call  it,  of  the 
natural  landscape,  and  they  are  important  elements  in  the 
view  we  are  taking  of  geography,  whether  we  consider  their 
immediate  or  their  incidental  influence.  Birds  affect  vegeta 
tion  directly  by  sowing  seeds  and  by  consuming  them ;  they 
affect  it  indirectly  by  destroying  insects  injurious,  or,  in  some 
cases,  beneficial  to  vegetable  life.  Hence,  when  we  kill  a  seed- 
sowing  bird,  we  check  the  dissemination  of  a  plant ;  when  we 
kill  a  bird  which  digests  the  seed  it  swallows,  we  promote  the 
increase  of  a  vegetable.  Nature  protects  the  seeds  of  wild, 
much  more  effectually  than  those  of  domesticated  plants.  The 
cereal  grains  are  completely  digested  when  consumed  by  birds, 
but  the  germ  of  the  smaller  stone  fruits  and  of  very  many  other 
wild  vegetables  is  uninjured,  perhaps  even  stimulated  to  more 
vigorous  growth,  by  the  natural  chemistry  of  the  bird's  stom 
ach.  The  power  of  flight  and  the  restless  habits  of  the  bird 
enable  it  to  transport  heavy  seeds  to  far  greater  distances  than 

*  The  wood  pigeon  has  been  observed  to  increase  in  numbers  in  Europe 
also,  when  pains  have  been  taken  to  exterminate  the  hawk.  The  pigeons, 
which  migrated  in  flocks  so  numerous  that  they  were  whole  days  in  pass 
ing  a  given  point,  were  no  doubt  injurious  to  the  grain,  but  probably  less 
so  than  is  generally  supposed ;  for  they  did  not  confine  themselves  exclu 
sively  to  the  harvests  for  their  nourishment. 


88  BIRDS    AS    DESTROYERS    OF    INSECTS. 

they  could  be  carried  by  the  wind.  A  swift-winged  bird  may 
drop  cherry  stones  a  thousand  miles  from  the  tree  they  grow 
on  ;  a  hawk,  in  tearicg  a  pigeon,  may  scatter  from  its  crop  the 
still  fresh  rice  it  had  swallowed  at  a  distance  of  ten  degrees  of 
latitude/"  and  thus  the  occurrence  of  isolated  plants  in  situations 
where  their  presence  cannot  otherwise  well  be  explained,  is 
easily  accounted  for.  There  is  a  large  class  of  seeds  apparently 
specially  fitted  by  nature  for  dissemination  by  animals.  I 
refer  to  those  which  attach  themselves,  by  means  of  hooks,  or 
by  viscous  juices,  to  the  coats  of  quadrupeds  and  the  feathers 
of  birds,  and  are  thus  transported  wherever  their  living  vehi 
cles  may  chance  to  wander.  Some  birds,  too,  deliberately 
bury  seeds,  not  indeed  with  a  foresight  aiming  directly  at  the 
propagation  of  the  plant,  but  from  apparently  purposeless 
secretiveness,  or  as  a  mode  of  preserving  food  for  future  use. 

An  unfortunate  popular  error  greatly  magnifies  the  injury 
done  to  the  crops  of  grain  and  leguminous  vegetables  by  wild 
birds.  Yery  many  of  those  generally  supposed  to  consume 
large  quantities  of  the  seeds  of  cultivated  plants  really  feed 
almost  exclusively  upon  insects,  and  frequent  the  wheatfields, 
not  for  the  sake  of  the  grain,  but  for  the  eggs,  larvae,  and  fly 
of  the  multiplied  tribes  of  insect  life  which  are  so  destructive 
to  the  harvests.  This  fact  has  been  so  well  established  by  the 
examination  of  the  stomachs  of  great  numbers  of  birds  in 
Europe  and  New  England,  at  different  seasons  of  the  year, 
that  it  is  no  longer  open  to  doubt,  and  it  appears  highly  prob 
able  that  even  the  species  which  consume  more  or  less  grain 
generally  make  amends,  by  destroying  insects  whose  ravages 
would  have  been  still  more  injurious. f  On  this  subject,  we 

*  Pigeons  were  shot  near  Albany,  in  New  York,  a  few  years  ago,  with 
green  rice  in  their  crops,  which  it  was  thought  must  have  been  growing,  a 
very  few  hours  before,  at  the  distance  of  seven  or  eight  hundred  miles. 

t  Professor  Treadwell,  of  Massachusetts,  found  that  a  half-grown 
American  robin  in  confinement  ate  in  one  day  sixty-eight  earthworms, 
weighing  together  nearly  once  and  a  half  as  much  as  the  bird  himself,  and 
another  had  previously  starved  upon  a  daily  allowance  of  eight  or  ten 
worms,  or  about  twenty  per  cent,  of  his  own  weight.  The  largest  of  these 


BIRDS  AS  DESTROYERS  OF  INSECTS.  89 

have  much  other  evidence  besides  that  derived  from  dissection. 
Direct  observation  has  shown,  in  many  instances,  that  the 
destruction  of  wild  birds  has  been  followed  by  a  great  multi 
plication  of  noxious  insects,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  these 
latter  have  been  much  reduced  in  numbers  by  the  protection 
and  increase  of  the  birds  that  devour  them.  Many  interesting 
facts  of  this  nature  have  been  collected  by  professed  natural 
ists,  but  I  shall  content  myself  with  a  few  taken  from  familiar 
and  generally  accessible  sources.  The  following  extract  is 
from  Michelet,  UOiseau  pp.  169,  170  : 

"The  stingy  farmer — an  epithet  justly  and  feelingly  be 
stowed  by  Virgil.  Avaricious,  blind,  indeed,  who  proscribes 
the  birds — those  destroyers  of  insects,  those  defenders  of  his 
harvests.  JSTot  a  grain  for  the  creature  which,  during  the  rains 
of  winter,  hunts  the  future  insect,  finds  out  the  nests  of  the 

numbers  appeared,  so  far  as  could  be  judged  by  watching  parent  birds  of  the 
same  species,  as  they  brought  food  to  their  young,  to  be  much  greater  than 
that  supplied  to  them  when  fed  in  the  nest ;  for  the  old  birds  did  not  return 
with  worms  or  insects  oftcner  than  once  in  ten  minutes  on  an  average.  If 
we  suppose  the  parents  to  hunt  for  food  twelve  hours  in  a  day,  and  a  nest 
to  contain  four  young,  we  should  have  seventy-two  worms,  or  eighteen 
each,  as  the  daily  supply  of  the  brood.  It  is  probable  enough  that  some 
of  the  food  collected  by  the  parents  may  be  more  nutritious  than  the  earth 
worms,  and  consequently  that  a  smaller  quantity  sufficed  for  the  young  iu 
the  nest  than  when  reared  under  artificial  conditions. 

The  supply  required  by  growing  birds  is  not  the  measure  of  their  wants 
after  they  have  arrived  at  maturity,  and  it  is  not  by  any  means  certain 
that  great  muscular  exertion  always  increases  the  demand  for  nourish 
ment,  either  in  the  lower  animals  or  in  man.  The  members  of  the  English 
Alpine  Club  are  not  distinguished  for  appetites  which  would  make  them 
unwelcome  guests  to  Swiss  landlords,  and  I  think  every  man  who  has  had 
the  personal  charge  of  field  or  railway  hands,  must  have  observed  that 
laborers  who  spare  their  strength  tl.e  least  are  not  the  most  valiant 
trencher  champions.  During  the  period  when  imprisonment  for  debt 
was  permitted  in  New  England,  persons  confined  in  country  jails  had  no 
specific  rJlowance,  and  they  were  commonly  fed  without  stint.  I  have 
often  inquired  concerning  their  diet,  and  been  assured  by  the  jailers  that 
their  prisoners,  who  were  not  provided  with  work  or  other  means  of  exer 
cise,  consumed  a  considerably  larger  supply  of  food  than  common  out-dooi 
laborers. 


90  BIRDS   AS   DESTKOYEKS    OF   INSECTS. 

larvae,  examines,  turns  over  every  leaf,  and  destroys,  every 
\day,  thousands  of  incipient  caterpillars.  But  sacks  of  corn  for 
the  mature  insect,  whole  fields  for  the  grasshoppers,  which  the 
bird  would  have  made  war  upon.  With  eyes  fixed  upon  his 
furrow,  upon  the  present  moment  only,  without  seeing  and 
Without  foreseeing,  blind  to  the  great  harmony  which  is  never 
:  broken  with  impunity,  he  has  everywhere  demanded  or  ap- 
'  proved  laws  for  the  extermination  of  that  necessary  ally  «*f  his 
toil — the  insectivorous  bird.  And  the  insect  has  well  avenged 
the  bird.  It  has  become  necessary  to  revoke  in  haste  the  pro 
scription.  In  the  Isle  of  Bourbon,  for  instance,  a  price  was  set 
on  the  head  of  the  martin ;  it  disappeared,  and  the  grasshop 
pers  took  possession  of  the  island,  devouring,  withering,  scorch 
ing  with  a  biting  drought  all  that  they  did  not  consume.  In 
JSTorth  America  it  has  been  the  same  with  the  starling,  the 
protector  of  Indian  corn.*  Even  the  sparrow,  which  really 
does  attack  grain,  but  which  protects  it  still  more,  the  pilferer, 
the  outlaw,  loaded  with  abuse  and  smitten  with  curses — it  has 
been  found  in  Hungary  that  they  were  likely  to  perish  without 
him,  that  he  alone  could  sustain  the  mighty  war  against  the 
beetles  and  the  thousand  winged  enemies  that  swarm  in  the 
lowlands ;  they  have  revoked  the  decree  of  banishment,  re 
called  in  haste  this  valiant  militia,  which,  though  deficient  in 
discipline,  is  nevertheless  the  salvation  of  the  country.f 

*  I  hope  Miclielet  lias  good  authority  for  this  statement,  but  I  am  un- 
a])le  to  confirm  it. 

t  Apropos  of  the  sparrow — a  single  pair  of  which,  according  to  Micli 
elet,  p.  315,  carries  to  the  nest  four  thousand  and  three  hundred  caterpil 
lars  or  coleoptera  in  a  week — I  take  from  the  Record,  an  English  religious 
newspaper,  of  December  15,  1862,  the  following  article  communicated  to 
a  country  paper  by  a  person  who  signs  himself  "A  real  friend  to  the 
farmer :  " 

"  Orawley  Sparrow  Club. — The  annual  dinner  took  place  at  the  Georgo 
Inn  on  Wednesday  last.  The  first  prize  was  awarded  to  Mr.  I.  Bedford, 
Worth,  having  destroyed  within  the  last  year  1,467.  Mr.  Heayman  took 
the  second  with  1,448  destroyed.  Mr.  Stone,  third,  with  982  affixed. 
Total  destroyed,  11,944.  Old  birds,  8,663 ;  you.Mg  ditto,  T22 ;  eggs,  2,556." 

This  trio  of  valiant  fowlers,  and  their  less  fortunate — or  rather  less  un- 


HOSTILITY    TO   BIRDS.  91 

"  "Not  long  since,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Rouen  and  in  the 
valley  of  Monville,  the  blackbird  was  for  some  time  proscribed. 
The  beetles  profited  well  by  this  proscription ;  their  larvae, 
infinitely  multiplied,  carried  on  their  subterranean  labors  with 
such  success,  that  a  meadow  was  shown  me,  the  surface  of 
which  was  completely  dried  up,  every  herbaceous  root  was 
consumed,  and  the  whole  grassy  mantle,  easily  loosened,  might 
have  been  rolled  up  and  carried  away  like  a  carpet." 

Diminution  and  Extirpation  of  Birds. 

The  general  hostility  of  the  European  populace  to  the 
smaller  birds  is,  in  part,  the  remote  effect  of  the  reaction  cre 
ated  by  the  game  laws.  When  the  restrictions  imposed  upon 
the  chase  by  those  laws  were  suddenly  removed  in  France, 
the  whole  people  at  once  commenced  a  destructive  campaign 
against  every  species  of  wild  animal.  Arthur  Young,  writing 
in  Provence,  on  the  30th  of  August,  1789,  soon  after  the 
National  Assembly  had  declared  the  chase  free,  thus  com 
plains  of  the  annoyance  he  experienced  from  the  use  made  by 
the  peasantry  of  their  newly  won  liberty.  "  One  would  think 
that  every  rusty  firelock  in  all  Provence  was  at  work  in  the 
indiscriminate  destruction  of  all  the  birds.  The  wadding 
buzzed  by  my  ears,  or  fell  into  my  carriage,  five  or  six  times 
in  the  course  of  the  day."  *  *  "  The  declaration  of  the 
Assembly  that  every  man  is  free  to  hunt  on  his  own  land 

fortunate,  but  not  therefore  less  guilty — associates,  have  rescued  by  their 
prowess,  it  may  be,  a  score  of  pecks  of  grain  from  being  devoured  by  the 
voracious  sparrow,  but  every  one  of  the  twelve  thousand  hatched  and  nn- 
hatched  birds,  thus  sacrificed  to  puerile  vanity  and  ignorant  prejudice, 
would  have  saved  his  bushel  of  wheat  by  preying  upon  insects  that  destroy 
the  grain.  Mr.  Bedford,  Mr.  Heayman,  and  Mr.  Stone  ought  to  contribute 
the  value  of  the  bread  they  have  wasted  to  the  fund  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Lancashire  weavers ;  and  it.  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  next  Byron  will  satirize 
the  sparrowcide  as  severely  as  the  first  did  the  prince  of  anglers,  Walton, 
in  the  well  known  lines : 

"  The  quaint,  old,  cruel  coxcomb  in  his  gullet 
Should  have  a  hook,  and  a  small  trout  to  pull  it." 


92  EFFECT   OF   GAME   LAWS — DESTRUCTION   OF   BIEDS. 

*  *  has  filled  all  France -with  an  intolerable  cloud  of  sports 
men.  *  *  The  declaration  speaks  of  compensations  and 
indemnities  [to  the  seigneurs],  but  the  ungovernable  populace 
takes  advantage  of  the  abolition  of  the  game  laws  and  laughs 
at  the  obligation  imposed  by  the  decree." 

The  French  Revolution  removed  similar  restrictions,  with 
similar  results,  in  other  countries.  The  habits  then  formed 
have  become  hereditary  on  the  Continent,  and  though  game 
laws  still  exist  in  England,  there  is  little  doubt  that  the  blind 
prejudices  of  the  ignorant  and  half-educated  classes  in  that 
country  against  birds  are,  in  some  degree,  at  least,  due  to  a 
legislation,  which,  by  restricting  the  chase  of  all  game  worth 
killing,  drives  the  unprivileged  sportsman  to  indemnify  him 
self  by  slaughtering  all  wild  life  which  is  not  reserved  for  the 
amusement  of  his  betters.  Hence  the  lord  of  the  manor  buys 
his  partridges  and  his  hares  by  sacrificing  the  bread  of  his 
tenants,  and  so  long  as  the  farmers  of  Crawley  are  forbidden 
to  follow  higher  game,  they  will  suicidally  revenge  themselves 
by  destroying  the  sparrows  which  protect  their  wheatfields. 

On  the  Continent,  and  especially  in  Italy,  the  comparative 
scarcity  and  dearness  of  animal  food  combine  with  the  feeling 
I  have  just  mentioned  to  stimulate  still  further  the  destructive 
passions,  of  the  fowler.  In  the  Tuscan  province  of  Grosseto, 
containing  less  than  2,000  square  miles,  nearly  300,000  thrushes 
and  other  small  birds  are  annually  brought  to  market.* 

*  SA.LVAGXOLI,  Memorie  suite  Maremme  Toscane,  p.  143.  The  country 
about  Naples  is  filled  with  slender  towers  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  high,  which 
are  a  standing  puzzle  to  strangers.  They  are  the  stations  of  the  fowlers 
who  watch  from  them  the  flocks  of  small  birds  and  drive  them  down  in 
to  the  nets  by  throwing  stones  over  them.  See  Appendix,  No.  14. 

Tschudi  has  collected  in  his  little  work,  Ueber  die  LandwirthscJiaftlicJie 
Bedeutung  der  Vogel,  many  interesting  facts  respecting  the  utility  of  birds, 
and  the  wanton  destruction  of  them  in  Italy  and  elsewhere.  Not  only  the 
owl,  but  many  other  birds  more  familiarly  known  as  predacious  in  their 
habits,  are  useful  by  destroying  great  numbers  of  mice  and  moles.  Th« 
importance  of  this  las:  service  becomes  strikingly  apparent  when  it  is 
known  that  the  burrows  of  the  mole  are  among  the  most  frequent  causes 
of  rupture  in  the  dikes  of  the  Po,  and,  consequently,  of  inundations  which 


WEAKNESS    OF   BIRDS.  93 

Birds  are  less  hardy  in  constitution,  they  possess  less  facility 
of  accommodation,*  and  they  are  more  severely  affected  by 
climatic  excess  than  quadrupeds.  Besides,  they  generally  want 
the  means  of  shelter  against  the  inclemency  of  the  weather 
and  against  pursuit  by  their  enemies,  which  holes  and  dens 
afford  to  burrowing  animals  and  to  some  larger  beasts  of  prey. 
The  egg  is  exposed  to  many  dangers  before  hatching,  and  the 
young  bird  is  especially  tender,  defenceless,  and  helpless. 
Every  cold  rain,  every  violent  wind,  every  hailstorm  during 
the  breeding  season,  destroys  hundreds  of  nestlings,  and  the 
parent  often  perishes  with  her  progeny  while  brooding  over  it 
in  the  vain  effort  to  protect  it.f  The  great  proportional  num 
bers  of  birds,  their  migratory  habits,  and  the  ease  with  which 
they  may  escape  most  dangers  that  beset  them,  would  seem  to 
secure  them  from  extirpation,  and  even  from  very  great  nu 
merical  reduction.  But  experience  shows  that  when  not  pro- 
lay  many  square  miles  under  water. — Annales  des  Fonts  et  Chaussees,  1847, 
Ire  semestre,  p.  150.  See  also  VOGT,  Niitzliche  u,  sekddliche  Thiere. 

*  Wild  birds  are  very  tenacious  in  their  habits.  The  extension  of  par 
ticular  branches  of  agriculture  introduces  new  birds  ;  but  unless  in  the  case 
of  such  changes  in  physical  conditions,  particular  species  seem  indissolubly 
attached  to  particular  localities.  The  migrating  tribes  follow  almost  un- 
deviatingly  the  same  precise  line  of  flight  in  their  annual  journeys,  and 
establish  themselves  in  the  same  breeding  places  from  year  to  year.  The 
stork  is  a  strong- winged  bird  and  roves  far  for  food,  but  very  rarely  estab 
lishes  new  colonies..  He  is  common  in  Holland,  but  unknown  in  England. 
Not  above  five  or  six  pairs  of  storks  commonly  breed  in  the  suburbs  of 
Constantinople  along  the  European  shore  of  the  narrow  Bosphorus,  while 
— much  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  Moslems,  who  are  justly  proud  of  the 
marked  partiality  of  so  orthodox  a  bird — dozens  of  chimneys  of  the  true 
believers  on  the  Asiatic  side  are  crowned  with  his  nests.  See  App.  No.  15. 

t  It  is  not  the  unfledged  and  the  nursing  bird  alone  that  are  exposed 
to  destruction  by  severe  weather.  Whole  flocks  of  adult  and  strong- 
winged  tribes  are  killed  by  hail.  Severe  winters  are  usually  followed  by 
a  sensible  diminution  in  the  numbers  of  the  non-migrating  birds,  and  a 
cold  storm  in  summer  often  proves  fatal  to  the  more  delicate  species.  On 
the  10th  of  June,  184-,  five  or  six  inches  of  snow  fell  in  Northern  Vermont. 
The  next  morning  I  found  a  humming  bird  killed  by  the  cold,  and  hanging 
by  its  claws  just  below  a  loose  clapboard  on  the  wall  of  a  small  wooden 
building  where  it  had  sought  shelter. 


DESTRUCTION    OF   BIRDS. 

tected  by  law,  by  popular  favor  or  superstition,  or  by  other 
special  circumstances,  they  yield  very  readily  to  the  hostile 
influences  of  civilization,  and,  though  the  first  operations  of  the 
settler  are  favorable  to  the  increase  of  many  species,  the  great 
extension  of  rural  and  of  mechanical  industry  is,  in  a  variety 
of  ways,  destructive  even  to  tribes  not  directly  warred  upon 
by  man.* 

*  LYELL,  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  409,  observes :  "  Of  birds  it  is  estimated 
that  the  number  of  those  which  die  every  year  equals  the  aggregate  num 
ber  by  which  the  species  to  which  they  respectively  belong  is,  on  the 
average,  permanently  represented." 

A  remarkable  instance  of  the  influence  of  new  circumstances  upon  birds 
was  observed  upon  the  establishment  of  a  lighthouse  on  Cape  Cod  some 
years  since.  The  morning  after  the  lamps  were  lighted  for  the  first  time, 
more  than  a  hundred  dead  birds  of  several  different  species,  chiefly  water 
fowl,  were  found  at  the  foot  of  the  tower.  They  had  been  killed  in  the 
course  of  the  night  by  flying  against  the  thick  glass  or  grating  of  the 
lantern.  See  Appendix,  Xo.  16. 

Migrating  birds,  whether  for  greater  security  from  eagles,  hawks,  and 
other  enemies,  or  for  some  unknown  reason,  perform  a  great  part  of  their 
annual  journeys  by  night ;  and  it  is  observed  in  the  Alps  that  they  follow 
the  high  roads  in  their  passage  across  the  mountains.  This  is  partly 
because  the  food  in  search  of  which  they  must  sometimes  descend  is  prin 
cipally  found  near  the  roads.  It  is,  however,  not  altogether  for  the  sake 
of  consorting  with  man,  or  of  profiting  by  his  labors,  that  their  line  of  flight 
conforms  to  the  paths  he  has  traced,  but  rather  because  the  great  roads  are 
carried  through  the  natural  depressions  in  the  chain,  and  hence  the  birds 
can  cross  the  summit  by  these  routes  without  rising  to  a  height  where  at 
the  seasons  of  migration  the  cold  would  be  excessive. 

The  instinct  which  guides  migratory  birds  in  their  course  is  not  in  all 
cases  infallible,  and  it  seems  to  be  confounded  by  changes  in  the  condition 
of  the  surface.  I  am  familiar  with  a  village  in  New  England,  at  the  junc 
tion  of  two  valleys,  each  drained  by  a  mill  stream,  where  the  flocks  of  wild 
geese  which  formerly  passed,  every  spring  and  autumn,  were  very  frequently 
lost,  as  it  was  popularly  phrased,  and  I  have  often  heard  their  screams  in 
the  night  as  they  flew  wildly  about  in  perplexity  as  to  the  proper  course. 
Perhaps  the  village  lights  embarrassed  them,  or  perhaps  the  constant 
changes  in  the  face  of  the  country,  from  the  clearings  then  going  on, 
introduced  into  the  landscape  features  not  according  with  the  ideal  map 
handed  down  in  the  anserine  family,  and  thus  deranged  its  traditional 
geography. 


EXTIRPATION    OF   BIRDS.  95 

Nature  sets  bounds  to  the  disproportionate  increase  of 
birds,  while  at  the  same  time,  by  the  multitude  of  their  re 
sources,  she  secures  them  from  extinction  through  her  own 
spontaneous  agencies.  Man  both  preys  upon  them  and  wan 
tonly  destroys  them.  The  delicious  flavor  of  game  birds,  and 
the  skill  implied  in  the  various  arts  of  the  sportsman  who 
devotes  himself  to  fowling,  make  them  favorite  objects  of  the 
chase,  while  the  beauty  of  their  plumage,  as  a  military  and 
feminine  decoration,  threatens  to  involve  the  sacrifice  of  the 
last  survivor  of  many  once  numerous  species.  Thus  far,  but- 
few  birds  described  by  ancient  or  modern  naturalists  are 
known  to  have  become  absolutely  extinct,  though  there  are 
some  cases  in  which  they  are  ascertained  to  have  utterly  disap 
peared  from  the  face  of  the  earth  in  very  recent  times.  The 
most  familiar  instances  are  those  of  the  dodo,  a  large  bird 
peculiar  to  the  Mauritius  or  Isle  of  France,  exterminated  about 
the  year  1690,  and  now  known  only  by  two  or  three  fragments 
of  skeletons,  and  the  solitary,  which  inhabited  the  islands  of 
Bourbon  and  Rodriguez,  but  has  not  been  seen  for  more  than 
a  century.  A  parrot  and  some  other  birds  of  the  Norfolk 
Island  group  are  said  to  have  lately  become  extinct.  The 
wingless  auk,  Alca  impennis,  a  bird  remarkable  for  its  exces 
sive  fatness,  was  very  abundant  two  or  three  hundred  years 
ai>;o  in  the  Faroe  Islands,  and  on  the  whole  Scandinavian  sea- 

*!3  7 

board.  The  early  voyagers  found  either  the  same  or  a  closely 
allied  species,  in  immense  numbers,  on  all  the  coasts  and  isl 
ands  of  Newfoundland.  The  value  of  its  flesh  and  its  oil  made 
it  one  of  the  most  important  resources  of  the  inhabitants  of 
those  sterile  regions,  and  it  was  naturally  an  object  of  keen 
pursuit.  It  is  supposed  to  be  now  completely  extinct,  and  few 
museums  can  show  even  its  skeleton. 

There  seems  to  be  strong  reason  to  believe  that  our  boasted 
modern  civilization  is  guiltless  of  one  or  two  sins  of  extermina 
tion  which  have  been  committed  in  recent  ages.  New  Zea 
land  formerly  possessed  three  species  of  dinornis,  one  of 
which,  called  moa  by  the  islanders,  was  much  larger  than  the 
ostrich.  The  condition  in  which  the  bones  of  these  birds  have 


06  DESTRUCTION    OF   35IRDS. 

been  found  and  the  traditions  of  the  natives  concur  to  pro^e 
that,  though  the  aborigines  had  probably  extirpated  them 
before  the  discovery  of  JS"ew  Zealand  by  the  whites,  they  still 
existed  at  a  comparatively  late  period.  The  same  remarks 
apply  to  a  winged  giant  the  eggs  of  which  have  been  brought 
from  Madagascar.  This  bird  must  have  much  exceeded  the 
dimensions  of  the  moa,  at  least  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the 
egg,  which  is  eight  times  as  large  as  the  average  size  of  the 
ostrich  egg,  or  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  times  that  of 
the  hen. 

But  though  we  have  no  evidence  that  man  has  extermi 
nated  many  species  of  birds,  we  know  that  his  persecutions 
have  caused  their  disappearance  from  many  localities  where 
they  once  were  common,  and  greatly  diminished  their  num 
bers  in  others.  The  cappercailzie,  Tetrao  urogalhis,  the  finest 
of  the  grouse  family,  formerly  abundant  in  Scotland,  had 
become  extinct  in  Great  Britain,  but  has  been  reintroduced 
from  Sweden.*  The  ostrich  is  mentioned  by  all  the  old  trav- 

*  The  cappercailzie,  or  tjader,  as  he  is  called  in  Sweden,  is  a  bird  of 
singular  habits,  and  seems  to  want  some  of  the  protective  instincts  which 
secure  most  other  wild  birds  from  destruction.  The  younger  Lscstadius 
frequently  notices  the  tjader,  in  his  very  remarkable  account  of  the  Swe 
dish  Laplanders — a  work  wholly  unsurpassed  as  a  genial  picture  of  senii- 
barbarian  life,  and  not  inferior  in  minuteness  of  detail  to  Schlatter's 
description  of  the  manners  of  the  Nogai  Tartars,  or  even  to  Lane's  admi 
rable  and  exhaustive  work  on  the  Modern  Egyptians.  The  tjader.  though 
not  a  bird  of  passage,  is  migratory,  or  rather  wandering  in  domicile,  and 
appears  to  undertake  very  purposeless  and  absurd  journeys.  "  When  he 
flits,"  says  Laestadius,  "he  follows  a  straight  course,  and  sometimes  pursues 
it  quite  out  of  the  country.  It  is  said  that,  in  foggy  weather,  he  sometimes 
flies  out  to  sea,  and,  when  tired,  falls  into  the  water  and  is  drowned.  It  is 
accordingly  observed  that,  when  he  flies  westwardly,  toward  the  moun 
tains,  he  soon  comes  back  again ;  but  when  he  takes  an  eastwardly  course, 
he  returns  no  more,  and  for  a  long  time  is  very  scarce  in  Lapland.  From 
this  it  would  seem  that  he  turns  back  from  the  bald  mountains,  when  he 
discovers  that  he  has  strayed  from  his  proper  home,  the  wood ;  but  when 
he  finds  himself  over  the  Baltic,  where  he  cannot  alight  to  rest  and  collect 
himself,  he  flies  on  until  he  is  exhausted  and  falls  into  the  sea." — PETKUS 
,  Journal  of  for sta  aret,  etc.,  p.  325. 


VALUE   OF   BIRDS.  97 

oilers,  as  common  on  the  Isthmus  of  Suez  down  to  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  appears  to  have  frequented 
Syria  and  even  Asia  Minor  at  earlier  periods,  but  is  now  found 
only  iii  the  seclusion  of  remoter  deserts. 

The  modern  increased  facilities  of  transportation  have 
brought  distant  markets  within  reach  of  the  professional  hunt 
er,  and  thereby  given  a  new  impulse  to  his  destructive  pro 
pensities.  !Nbt  only  do  all  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  contrib 
ute  to  the  supply  of  game  for  the  British  capital,  but  the 
canvas-back  duck  of  the  Potomac,  and  even  the  prairie  hen 
from  the  basin  of  the  Mississippi,  may  be  found  at  the  stalls 
of  the  London  poulterer.  Kohl  *  informs  us  that  on  the  coasts 
of  the  Korth  Sea,  twenty  thousand  wild  ducks  are  usually 
taken  in  the  course  of  the  season  in  a  single  decoy,  and  sent  to 
the  large  maritime  towns  for  sale.  The  statistics  of  the  great 
European  cities  show  a  prodigious  consumption  of  game  birds, 
but  the  official  returns  fall  far  below  the  truth,  because  they 
do  not  include  the  rural  districts,  and  because  neither  the 
poacher  nor  his  customers  report  the  number  of  his  victims. 
Reproduction,  in  cultivated  countries,  cannot  keep  pace  with 
this  excessive  destruction,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  all  the 
wild  birds  which  are  chased  for  their  flesh  or  their  plumage 
are  diminishing  with  a  rapidity  which  justifies  the  fear  that 
the  last  of  them  will  soon  follow  the  dodo  and  the  wingless 
auk. 

Fortunately  the  larger  birds  which  are  pursued  for  their 
flesh  or  for  their  feathers,  and  those  the  eggs  of  which  are  used 
as  food,  are,  so  far  as  we  know  the  functions  appointed  to  them 
by  nature,  not  otherwise  specially  useful  to  man,  and,  there 
fore,  their  wholesale  destruction  is  an  economical  evil  only  in 
the  same  sense  in  which  all  waste  of  productive  capital  is  an 
evil.  If  it  were  possible  to  confine  the  consumption  of  game 
fowl  to  a  number  equal  to  the  annual  increase,  the  world 
would  be  a  gainer,  but  not  to  the  same  extent  as  it  would  be 
by  checking  the  wanton  sacrifice  of  millions  of  the  smaller 

*  Die  Herzogtfiiimer  Schleswig  und  Holstein,  i,  p.  203. 
7 


98  INTRODUCTION   OF   BIRDS. 

birds,  which  are  of  no  real  value  as  food,  but  which,  as  we 
havo  seen,  render  a  most  important  service  by  battling,  in  our 
behalf,  as  well  as  in  their  own,  against  the  countless  legions  of 
humming  and  of  creeping  things,  with  which  the  prolific  pow 
ers  of  insect  life  would  otherwise  cover  the  earth. 

Introduction  of  Birds. 

Man  has  undesignedly  introduced  into  new  districts  per 
haps  fewer  species  of  birds  than  of  quadrupeds  ;  but  the  distri 
bution  of  birds  is  very  much  influenced  by  the  character  of  his 
industry,  and  the  transplantation  of  every  object  of  agricul 
tural  production  is,  at  a  longer  or  shorter  interval,  followed  by 
that  of  the  birds  which  feed  upon  its  seeds,  or  more  frequently 
upon  the  insects  it  harbors.  The  vulture,  the  crow,  and  other 
winged  scavengers,  follow  the  march  of  armies  as  regularly  as 
the  wolf.  Birds  accompany  ships  on  long  voyages,  for  the 
sake  of  the  ofial  which  is  thrown  overboard,  and,  in  such  cases, 
it  might  often  happen  that  they  would  breed  and  become  nat 
uralized  in  countries  where  they  had  been  unknown  before. * 
There  is  a  familiar  story  of  an  English  bird  which  built  its  nest 
in  an  unused  block  in  the  rigging  of  a  ship,  and  made  one  or 
two  short  voyages  with  the  vessel  while  hatching  its  eggs. 
Had  the  young  become  fledged  while  lying  in  a  foreign  har 
bor,  they  would  of  course  have  claimed  the  rights  of  citizen 
ship  in  the  country  where  they  first  took  to  the  wing.f 

*  Gulls  hover  about  ships  in  port,  and  often  far  out  at  sea,  diligently 
watching  for  the  waste  of  the  caboose.  While  the  four  great  fleets, 
English,  French,  Turkish,  and  Egyptian,  were  lying  in  the  Bosphorus,  in 
the  summer  and  autumn  of  1853,  a  young  lady  of  iny  family  called  my 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  gulls  were  far  more  numerous  about  the  ships 
of  one  of  the  fleets  than  about  the  others.  This  was  verified  by  repeated 
observation,  and  the  difference  was  owing  no  doubt  to  the  greater  abun 
dance  of  the  refuse  from  the  cookrooms  of  the  naval  squadron  most 
frequented  by  the  birds.  Persons  acquainted  with  the  economy  of  the 
navies  of  the  states  in  question,  will  be  able  to  conjecture  which  fleet  was 
most  favored  with  these  delicate  attentions. 

t  Birds  do  not  often  voluntarily  take  passage  on  board  ships  bound  for 


UTILITY   OF    INSECTS    AND    WOKMS.  99 

v 

Some  enthusiastic  entomologist  will,  perhaps,  by  and  by 
discover  that  insects  and  worms  are  as  essential  as  the  larger 
organisms  to  the  proper  working  of  the  great  terraqueous 
machine,  and  we  shall  have  as  eloquent  pleas  in  defence  of 
the  mosquito,  and  perhaps  even  of  the  tzetze  fly,  as  Tonssenel 
and  Mielielet  have  framed  in  behalf  of  the  bird.*  The  silk 
worm  and  the  bee  need  no  apologist ;  a  gallnut  produced  by 
the  puncture  of  an  insect  on  a  Syrian  oak  is  a  necessary  ingre 
dient  in  the  ink  I  am  writing  with,  and  from  my  windows  I 
recognize  the  grain  of  the  kermes  and  the  cochineal  in  the  gay 
habiliments  of  the  holiday  groups  beneath  them.  But  agricul 
ture,  too,  is  indebted  to  the  insect  and  the  worm.  The  an 
cients,  according  to  Pliny,  were  accustomed  to  hang  branches 

foreign  countries,  but  I  can  testify  to  one  such  case.  A  stork,  which  had 
nested  near  one  of  the  palaces  on  the  Bosphorus,  had,  by  some  accident, 
injured  a  wing,  and  was  unable  to  join  his  fellows  when  they  commenced 
their  winter  migration  to  the  banks  of  the  Kile.  Before  he  was  able  to  fly 
again,  he  was  caught,  and  the  flag  of  the  nation  to  which  the  palace 
belonged  was  tied  to  his  leg,  so  that  he  was  easily  identified  at  a  consid 
erable  distance.  As  his  wing  grew  stronger,  he  made  several  unsatis 
factory  experiments  at  flight,  and  at  last,  by  a  vigorous  effort,  succeeded 
in  reaching  a  passing  ship  bound  southward,  and  perched  himself  on  a 
topsail  yard.  I  happened  to  witness  this  movement,  and  observed  him 
quietly  maintaining  his  position  as  long  as  I  could  discern  him  with  a  spy 
glass.  I  suppose  he  finished  the  voyage,  for  he  certainly  did  not  return  to 
the  palace. 

*  The  enthusiasm  of  naturalists  is  not  always  proportioned  to  the  mag 
nitude  or  importance  of  the  organisms  they  concern  themselves  with.  It 
is  not  recorded  that  Adams,  who  found  the  colossal  antediluvian  pachy 
derm  in  a  thick-ribbed  mountain  of  Siberian  ice,  ran  wild  over  his  trou 
vaille;  but  Schmidl,  in  describing  the  natural  history  of  the  caves  of  the 
Karst,  speaks  of  an  eminent  entomologist  as  "  der  gluckliche  Entdecker" 
the  happy  discoverer  of  a  new  coleopteron,  in  one  of  those  dim  caverns. 
How  various  are  the  sources  of  happiness !  Think  of  a  learned  German 
professor,  the  bare  enumeration  of  whose  Rath-ships  and  scientific  Mitglied- 
ships  fills  a  page,  made  famous  in  the  annals  of  science,  immortal,  happy, 
by  the  discovery  of  a  beetle!  Had  that  imperial  ennuye,  who  offered  a 
premium  for  the  invention  of  a  new  pleasure,  but  read  Schmidl's  Holilen 
dcs  Karstes,  what  splendid  rewards  would  he  not  have  heaped  upon  Kirb* 
and  Spence ! 


100  UTILITY    OF   EARTHWORMS. 

of  the  wild  fig  upon  "the  domestic  tree,  in  order  that  the  inseetw 
which  frequented  the  former  might  hasten  the  ripening  of  the 
cultivated  fig  by  their  punctures — or,  as  others  suppose,  might 
fructify  it  by  transporting  to  it  the  pollen  of  the  wild  fruit — 
and  this  process,  called  caprification,  is  not  yet  entirely  obsolete. 
The  earthworms  long  ago  made  good  their  title  to  the  respect 
and  gratitude  of  the  farmer  as  well  as  of  the  angler.  The 
utility  of  the  earthworms  has  been  pointed  out  in  many 
scientific  as  well  as  in  many  agricultural  treatises.  The  fol 
lowing  extract,  cut  from  a  newspaper,  will  answer  my  present 
purpose : 

"  Mr.  Josiah  Farkes,  the  consulting  engineer  of  the  Royal 
Agricultural  Society  of  England,  says  that  worms  are  great 
assistants  to  the  drainer,  and  valuable  aids  to  the  farmer  in 
keeping  up  the  fertility  of  the  soil.  lie  says  they  love  moist, 
but  not  wet  soils  ;  they  will  bore  down  to,  but  not  into  water  ;^ 
they  multiply  rapidly  on  land  after  drainage,  and  prefer  a 
deeply  dried  soil.  On  examining  with  Mr.  Thomas  Ham 
mond,  of  Penhurst,  Kent,  part  of  a  field  which  he  had  deeply 
drained,  after  long-previous  shallow  drainage,  he  found  that 
the  worms  had  greatly  increased  in  number,  and  that  their 
bores  descended  quite  to  the  level  of  the  pipes.  Many  worm 
bores  were  large  enough  to  receive  the  little  finger.  Mr. 
Henry  Handley  had  informed  him  of  a  piece  of  land  near  the 
sea  in  Lincolnshire,  over  which  the  sea  had  broken  and  killed 
all  the  worms — the  field  remained  sterile  until  the  worms 
again  inhabited  it.  He  also  showed  him  a  piece  of  pasture 
land  near  to  his  house,  in  which  worms  were  in  such  numbers 
that  he  thought  their  casts  interfered  too  much  with  its  pro 
duce,  which  induced  him  to  have  it  rolled  at  nifflit  in  order  to 

/  O 

destroy  the  worms.  The  result  was,  that  the  fertility  of  the 
field  greatly  declined,  nor  was  it  restored  until  they  had 
recruited  their  numbers,  which  was  aided  by  collecting  and 
transporting  multitudes  of  worms  from  the  fields. 

"  The  great  depth  into  which  worms  will  bore,  and  from 
which  they  push  up  fine  fertile  soil,  and  cast  it  on  the  surface, 
has  been  admirably  traced  by  Mr.  C.  Darwin,  of  Down,  Kent, 


UTILITY  OF  E'AETIIWOEMS.  101 

who  lias  shown  that  in  a  few  years  they  have  actually  elevated 
the  surface  of  fields  by  a  large  layer  of  rich  mould,  several  inches 
thick— thus  affording  nourishment  to  the  roots  of  grasses,  and 
increasing  the  productiveness  of  the  soil." 

It  should  be  added  that  the  writer  quoted,  and  others  who 
have  discussed  the  subject,  have  overlooked  one  very  import 
ant  clement  in  the  fertilization  produced  by  earthworms.  I 
refer  to  the  enrichment  of  the  soil  by  their  excreta  during  life, 
and  by  the  decomposition  of  their  remains  when  they  die. 
The  manure  thus  furnished  is  as  valuable  as  the  like  amount 
of  similar 'animal  products  derived  from  higher  organisms,  and 
when  w^e  consider  the  prodigious  numbers  of  these  worms 
found  on  a  single  square  yard  of  some  soils,  we  may  easily  see 
that  they  furnish  no  insignificant  contribution  to  the  nutritive 
material  required  for  the  growth  of  plants.""5' 

The  perforations  of  the  earthworm  mechanically  affect  the 
texture  of  the  soil  and  its  permeability  by  water,  and  they 
therefore  have  a  certain  influence  on  the  form  and  character 
of  surface.  But  the  geographical  importance  of  insects  proper, 
as  well  as  of  worms,  depends  principally  on  their  connection 

*  I  believe  there  is  no  foundation  for  the  supposition  that  earthworms 
attack  the  tuber  of  the  potato.  Some  of  them,  especially  one  or  two  spe 
cies  employed  by  anglers  as  bait,  if  natives  of  the  woods,  are  at  least  rare 
in  shaded  grounds,  but  multiply  very  rapidly  after  the  soil  is  brought 
under  cultivation.  Forty  or  fifty  years  ago  they  were  so  scarce  in  the 
newer  parts  of  New  England,  that  the  rustic  fishermen  of  every  village 
kept  secret  the  few  places  where  they  were  to  be  found  in  their  neighbor 
hood,  as  a  professional  mystery,  but  at  present  one  can  hardly  turn  over  a 
shovelful  of  rich  moist  soil  anywhere,  without  unearthing  several  of  them. 
A  very  intelligent  lady,  born  in  the  woods  of  Northern  New  England,  told 
me  that,  in  her  childhood,  these  worms  were  almost  unknown  in  that 
.region,  though  anxiously  sought  for  by  the  anglers,  but  that  they  increased 
as  the  country  was  cleared,  and  at  last  became  so  numerous  in  some  places, 
that  the  water  of  springs,  and  even  of  shallow  wells,  which  had  formerly 
been  excellent,  was  rendered  undrinkable  by  the  quantity  of  dead  worms 
that  fell  into  them.  The  increase  of  the  robin  and  other  small  birds  which 
follow  the  settler  when  he  has  prepared  a  suitable  home  for  them,  at  last 
checked  the  excessive  multiplication  of  the  worms,  and  abated  the  nui 
sance. 


102  INFLUENCE  'OF -INSECTS   ON   VEGETATION. 

with  vegetable  life  as  agents  of  its  fecundation,  and  of  its 
destruction.*  I  am  acquainted  with  no  single  fact  so  strik 
ingly  illustrative  of  this  importance,  as  the  following  statement 
which  I  take  from  a  notice  of  Darwin's  volume,  On  Various 
Contrivances  by  which  British  and  Foreign  Orchids  are  Fertil 
ized  by  Insects,  in  the  Saturday  Review,  of  October  18,  1862  : 
"  The  net  result  is,  that  some  six  thousand  species  of  orchids 
are  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  agency  of  insects  for  their 
fertilization.  That  is  to  say,  were  those  plants  un visited  by 
insects,  they  would  all  rapidly  disappear."  What  is  true  of 
the  orchids  is  more  or  less  true  of  many  other  vegetable  fam 
ilies.  We  do  not  know  the  limits  of  this  agency,  and  many 
of  the  insects  habitually  regarded  as  unqualified  pests,  may 
directly  or  indirectly  perform  functions  as  important  to  the 
most  valuable  plants  as  the  services  rendered  by  certain  tribes 
to  the  orchids.  I  say  direcfly  or  indirectly,  because,  besides 
the  other  arrangements  of  nature  for  checking  the  undue  mul 
tiplication  of  particular  species,  she  has  established  a  police 
among  insects  themselves,  by  which  some  of  them  keep  down 
or  promote  the  increase  of  others ;  for  there  are  insects,  as 
well  as  birds  and  beasts,  of  prey.  The  existence  of  an  insect 
which  fertilizes  a  useful  vegetable  may  depend  on  that  of 

*  I  have  already  remarked  that  the  remains  of  extant  animals  are 
rarely,  if  ever,  gathered  in  sufficient  quantities  to  possess  any  geographical 
importance  by  their  mere  mass;  but  the  decayed  exuviee  of  even  the 
smaller  and  humbler  forms  of  life  are  sometimes  abundant  enough  to 
exercise  a  perceptible  influence  on  soil  and  atmosphere.  "  The  plain  of 
Cumana,"  says  Humboldt,  "presents  a  remarkable  phenomenon,  after 
heavy  rains.  The  moistened  earth,  when  heated  by  the  rays  of  the  sun, 
diffuses  the  musky  odor  common  in  the  torrid  zone  to  animals  of  very 
different  classes,  to  the  jaguar,  the  small  species  of  tiger  cat,  the  cabiai, 
the  gallinazo  vulture,  the  crocodile,  the  viper,  and  the  rattlesnake.  The 
gaseous  emanations,  the  vehicles  of  this  aroma,  appear  to  be  disengaged  in 
proportion  as  the  soil,  which  contains  the  remains  of  an  innumerable  mul 
titude  of  reptiles,  worms,  and  insects,  begins  to  be  impregnated  with 
water.  Wherever  we  stir  the  earth,  we  are  struck  with  the  mass  of 
organic  substances  which  in  turn  are  developed  and  become  transformed 
or  decomposed.  Nature  in  these  climes  seems  more  active,  more  prolific, 
and  so  to  speak,  more  prodigal  of  life." 


BALANCE   OF   ANIMAL   AND   VEGETABLE   LIFE.  103 

another,  which  constitutes  his  food  in  some  stage  of  his  life, 
and  this  other  again  may  be  as  injurious  to  some  plant  as  his 
destroyer  is  beneficial  to  another.    The  equation  of  animal  and 
vegetable  life  is  too  complicated  a  problem  for  human  inteK 
licence  to  solve,  and  we  can  never  know  how  wide  a  circle  of 

o 

disturbance  we  produce  in  the  harmonies  of  nature  when  we 
throw  the  smallest  pebble  into  the  ocean  of  organic  life. 

This  much,  however,  we  seem  authorized  to  conclude :  as 
often  as  we  destroy  the  balance  by  deranging  the  original  pro 
portions  between  different  orders  of  spontaneous  life,  the  law 
of  self-preservation  requires  us  to  restore  the  equilibrium,  by 
either  directly  returning  the  weight  abstracted  from  one  scale, 
or  removing  a  corresponding  quantity  from  the  other.  In 
other  words,  destruction  must  be  either  repaired  by  repro 
duction,  or  compensated  by  new  destruction  in  an  opposite 
quarter. 

The  parlor  aquarium  has  taught  even  those  to  whom  it  is 
but  an  amusing  toy,  that  the  balance  of  animal  and  vegetable 
life  must  be  preserved,  and  that  the  excess  of  either  is  fatal  to 
the  other,  in  the  artificial  tank  as  well  as  in  natural  waters. 
A  few  years  ago,  the  water  of  the  Cochituate  aqueduct  at 
Boston  became  so  offensive  in  smell  and  taste  as  to  be  quite 
unfit  for  use.  Scientific  investigation  found  the  cause  in  the 
too  scrupulous  care  with  which  aquatic  vegetation  had  been 
excluded  from  the  reservoir,  and  the  consequent  death  and 
decay  of  the  animalcules  which  could  not  be  shut  out,  nor  live 
in  the  water  without  the  vegetable  element.* 

*  It  is  remarkable  that  Palissy,  to  whose  great  merits  as  an  acute 
observer  I  am  happy  to  have  frequent  occasion  to  bear  testimony,  had 
noticed  that  vegetation  was  necessary  to  maintain  the  purity  of  water  in 
artificial  reservoirs,  though  he  mistook  the  rationale  of  its  influence,  which 
he  ascribed  to  the  elemental  "  salt  "  supposed  by  him  to  play  an  important 
part  in  all  the  operations  of  nature.  In  his  treatise  upon  "Waters  and 
Fountains,  p.  174,  of  the  reprint  of  1844,  he  says:  "And  in  special,  thou 
shalt  note  one  point,  the  which  is  understood  of  few :  that  is  to  say,  that 
the  leaves  of  the  trees  which  fall  upon  the  parterre,  and  the  herbs  growing 
beneath,  and  singularly  the  fruits,  if  any  there  be  upon  the  trees,  being 
decayed,  the  waters  of  the  parterre  shall  draw  unto  them  the  salt  of  the 


104  INSECTS   NOXIOUS   TO   GEAIN. 

Introduction  of  Insects. 

The  general  tendency  of  man's  encroachments  upon  spon- 
taneous  nature  has  been  to  increase  insect  lite  at  the  expense 
of  vegetation  and  of  the  smaller  quadrupeds  and  birds. 
Doubtless  there  are  insects  in  all  woods,  but  in  temperate 
climates  they  are  comparatively  few  and  harmless,  and  the 
most  numerous  tribes  which  breed  in  the  forest,  or  rather 
in  its  waters,  and  indeed  in  all  solitudes,  are  those  which 
little  injure  vegetation,  such  as  mosquitoes,  gnats,  and  the 
like.  With  the  cultivated  plants  of  man  come  the  myriad 
tribes  which  feed  or  breed  upon  them,  and  agriculture  not 
only  introduces  new  species,  but  so  multiplies  the  number  of 
individuals  as  to  defy  calculation.  Newly  introduced  vegeta 
bles  frequently  escape  for  years  the  insect  plagues  which  had 
infested  them  in  their  native  habitat ;  but  the  importation  of 
other  varieties  of  the  plant,  the  exchange  of  seed,  or  some 
mere  accident,  is  sure  in  the  long  run  to  carry  the  egg,  the 
larva,  or  the  chrysalis  to  the  most  distant  shores  where  the 
plant  assigned  to  it  by  nature  as  its  possession  has  preceded  it. 
For  many  years  after  the  colonization  of  the  United  States, 
few  or  none  of  the  insects  which  attack  wheat  in  its  different 
stages  of  growth,  were  known  in  America.  During  the  Revo 
lutionary  war,  the  Hessian  fly,  Cecidomyia  destructor,  made  its 
appearance,  and  it  was  so  called  because  it  was  first  observed 
in  the  year  when  the  Hessian  troops  were  brought  over,  and 
was  popularly  supposed  to  have  been  accidentally  imported 
by  those  unwelcome  strangers.  Other  destroyers  of  cereal 
grains  have  since  found  their  way  across  the  Atlantic,  and  a 
noxious  European  aphis  has  first  attacked  the  American  wheat- 
fields  within  the  last  four  or  five  years.  Unhappily,  in  these 
cases  of  migration,  the  natural  corrective  of  excessive  multipli 
cation,  the  parasitic  or  voracious  enemy  of  the  noxious  insect, 
does  not  always  accompany  the  wanderings  of  its  prey,  and 

said  fruits,  leaves,  and  herbs,  the  which  shall  greatly  better  the  water  of 
thy  fountains,  and  hinder  the  putrefaction  thereof." 


INTRODUCTION   OF   INSECTS.  105 

the  bane  long  precedes  the  antidote.  Hence,  in  the  United 
States,  the  ravages  of  imported  insects  injurious  to  cultivated 
crops,  not  being  checked  by  the  counteracting  influences  which 
nature  had  provided  to  limit  their  devastations  in  the  Old 
World,  are  much  more  destructive  than  in  Europe.  It  is  not 
known  that  the  wheat  midge  is  preyed  upon  in  America  by 
any  other  insect,  and  in  seasons  favorable  to  it,  it  multiplies  to 
a  degree  which  would  prove  almost  fatal  to  the  entire  harvest, 
were  it  not  that,  in  the  great  territorial  extent  of  the  United 
States,  there  is  room  for  such  differences  of  soil  and  climate  as, 
in  a  given  year,  to  present  in  one  State  all  the  conditions  favor 
able  to  the  increase  of  a  particular  insect,  while  in  another,  the 
natural  influences  are  hostile  to  it.  The  only  apparent  remedy 
for  this  evil  is,  to  balance  the  disproportionate  development  of 
noxious  foreign  species  by  bringing  from  their  native  country 
the  tribes  which  prey  upon  them.  This,  it  seems,  has  been 
attempted.  The  United  States'  Census  Report  for  1860,  p. 
82,  states  that  the  !N"ew  York  Agricultural  Society  "  has  intro 
duced  into  this  country  from  abroad  certain  parasites  which 
Providence  has  created  to  counteract  the  destructive  powers 
of  some  of  these  depredators." 

This  is,  however,  not  the  only  purpose  for  which  man  has 
designedly  introduced  foreign  forms  of  insect  life.  The  eggs 
of  the  silkworm  are  known  to  have  been  brought  from  the 
farther  East  to  Europe  in  the  sixth  century,  and  new  silk  spin 
ners  which  feed  on  the  castor  oil  bean  and  the  ail  an  thus,  have 
recently  been  reared  in  France  and  in  South  America  with 
promising  success.  The  cochineal,  long  regularly  bred  in 
aboriginal  America,  has  been  transplanted  to  Spain,  and  both 
the  kermes  insect  and  the  cantharides  have  been  transferred  to 
other  climates  than  their  own.  The  honey  bee  must  be  ranked 
next  to  the  silkworm  in  economical  importance.*  This  useful 

*  Between  the  years  1851  and  1853,  both  inclusive,  the  United  States 
exported  2,665,857  pounds  of  beeswax,  besides  a  considerable  quantity 
employed  in  the  manufacture  of  candles  for  exportation.  This  is  an  aver 
age  of  more  than  330,000  pounds  per  year.  The  census  of  1850  gave  the 
total  production  of  wax  and  honey  for  that  year  at  14,853,128  pounds.  In 


106  INTRODUCTION   OF   INSECTS. 

creature  was  carried  to  the  United  States  by  European  col 
onists,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  ;  it  did  not 
cross  the  Mississippi  till  the  close  of  the  eighteenth,  and  it  is 
only  within  the  last  five  or  six  years  that  it  has  been  trans 
ported  to  California,  where  it  was  previously  unknown.  The 
Italian  stingless  bee  has  very  lately  been  introduced  into  the 
United  States. 

The  insects  and  worms  intentionally  transplanted  by  man 
bear  but  a  small  proportion  to  those  accidentally  introduced 
by  him.  Plants  and  animals  often  carry  their  parasites  with 
them,  and  the  traffic  of  commercial  countries,  which  exchange 
their  products  with  every  zone  and  every  stage  of  social  exist 
ence,  cannot  fail  to  transfer  in  both  directions  the  minute 
organisms  that  are,  in  one  way  or  another,  associated  with 
almost  every  object  important  to  the  material  interests  of  man.* 

The  tenacity  of  life  possessed  by  many  insects,  their  pro 
digious  fecundity,  the  length  of  time  they  often  remain  in  the 
different  phases  of  their  existence,  f  the  security  of  the  retreats 

1860,  it  amounted  to  26,370,813  pounds,  the  increase  being  partly  due  to 
the  introduction  of  improved  races  of  bees  from  Italy  and  Switzerland. — 
BIGELOW,  Les  Etats  Unis  en  1863,  p.  376. 

*  A  few  years  ago,  a  laborer,  employed  at  a  Isforth  American  port  in 
discharging  a  cargo  of  hides  from  the  opposite  extremity  of  the  continent, 
was  fatally  poisoned  by  the  bite  or  the  sting  of  an  unknown  insect,  which 
ran  out  from  a  hide  he  was  handling. 

t  In  many  insects,  some  of  the  stages  of  life  regularly  continue  for  sev 
eral  years,  and  they  may,  under  peculiar  circumstances,  be  almost  indefi 
nitely  prolonged.  Dr.  Dwight  mentions  the  following  remarkable  case  of 
this  sort,  which  may  be  new  to  many  readers :  "  While  I  was  here  [at 
Williamstown,  Mass.],  Dr.  Fitch  showed  me  an  insect,  about  an  inch  in 
length,  of  a  brown  color  tinged  with  orange,  with  two  antennre,  not  unlike 
a  rosebug.  This  insect  came  out  of  a  tea  table,  made  of  the  boards  of  an 
apple  tree."  Dr.  Dwight  examined  the  table,  and  found  the  "  cavity 
whence  the  insect  had  emerged  into  the  light,"  to  be  "  about  two  inches 
in  length,  nearly  horizontal,  and  inclining  upward  very  little,  except  at  the 
mouth.  Between  the  hole,  and  the  outside  of  the  leaf  of  the  table,  there 
were  forty  grains  of  the  wood."  It  was  supposed  that  the  sawyer  and  the 
cabinet  maker  must  have  removed  at  least  thirteen  grains  more,  and  the 
table  had  been  in  the  possession  of  its  proprietor  for  twenty  years. 


INTRODUCTION    OF    INSECTS.  107 

into  which  their  small  dimensions  enable  them  to  retire,  are 
all  circumstances  very  favorable  not  only  to  the  perpetuity  of 
their  species,  but  to  their  transportation  to  distant  climates 
and  their  multiplication  in  their  new  homes.  The  teredo,  so 
destructive  to  shipping,  has  been  carried  by  the  vessels  whose 
wooden  walls  it  mines  to  almost  every  part  of  the  globe.  The 
termite,  or  white  ant,  is  said  to  have  been  brought  to  Rochefort 
by  the  commerce  of  that  port  a  hundred  years  ago.*  This 
creature  is  more  injurious  to  wooden  structures  and  imple 
ments  than  any  other  known  insect.  It  eats  out  almost  the 
entire  substance  of  the  wood,  leaving  only  thin  partitions 
between  the  galleries  it  excavates  in  it ;  but  as  it  never  gnaws 
through  the  surface  to  the  air,  a  stick  of  timber  may  be  almost 
wholly  consumed  without  showing  any  external  sign  of  the 
damage  it  has  sustained.  The  termite  is  found  also  in  other 
parts  of  France,  and  particularly  at  Rochelle,  where,  thus  far, 
its  ravages  are  confined  to  a  single  quarter  of  the  city.  A 
borer,  of  similar  habits,  is  not  uncommon  in  Italy,  and  you 
may  see  in  that  country,  handsome  chairs  and  other  furniture 
which  have  been  reduced  by  this  insect  to  a  framework  of 
powder  of  post,  covered,  and  apparently  held  together,  by 
nothing  but  the  varnish. 

The  carnivorous,  and  often  the  herbivorous  insects  render 
an  important  service  to  man  by  consuming  dead  and  decaying 
animal  and  vegetable  matter,  the  decomposition  of  which 
would  otherwise  fill  the  air  with  effluvia  noxious  to  health. 
Some  of  them,  the  grave-digger  beetle,  for  instance,  bury  the 
small  animals  in  which  they  lay  their  eggs,  and  thereby  pre 
vent  the  escape  of  the  gases  disengaged  by  putrefaction.  The 
prodigious  rapidity  of  development  in  insect  life,  the  great 
numbers  of  the  individuals  in  many  species,  and  the  voracity 
of  most  of  them  while  in  the  larva  state,  justify  the  appella 
tion  of  nature's  scavengers  which  has  been  bestowed  upon 
them,  and  there  is  very  little  doubt  that,  in  warm  countries, 

*  It  does  not  appear  to  be  quite  settled  whether  the  termites  of  Franco 
are  indigenous  or  imported.  See  QUATEEFAGES,  Souvenirs  tfun  Naturalise, 
ii,  pp.  400,  542,  543. 


108  INSECTS   AS   FOOD   FOR   FISH. 

they  consume  a  much  larger  quantity  of  putrescent  organic 
material  than  the  quadrupeds  and  the  birds  which  feed  upon 
such  aliment. 

Destruction  of  Insects. 

It  is  well  known  to  naturalists,  but  less  familiarly  to  com 
mon  observers,  that  the  aquatic  larvae  of  some  insects  consti 
tute,  at  certain  seasons,  a  large  part  of  the  food  of  fresh-water 
fish0  while  other  larvae,  in  their  turn,  prey  upon  the  spawn 
and  even  the  young  of  their  persecutors.*  The  larvse  of  the 
mosquito  and  the  gnat  are  the  favorite  food  of  the  trout  in  the 
wooded  regions  where  those  insects  abound.f  Earlier  in  the 
year  the  trout  feeds  on  the  larvse  of  the  May  fly,  which  is 
itself  very  destructive  to  the  spawn  of  the  salmon,  and  hence, 
by  a  sort  of  house-that-Jack-built,  the  destruction  of  the  mos- 

*  I  have  seen  the  larva  of  the  dragon  fly  in  an  aquarium,  bite  off  the 
head  of  a  young  fish  as  long  as  itself. 

t  Insects  and  fish — -which  prey  upon  and  feed  each  other — are  the  only 
forms  of  animal  life  that  are  numerous  in  the  native  woods,  and  their 
range  is,  of  course,  limited  by  the  extent  of  the  waters.  The  great  abun 
dance  of  the  trout,  and  of  other  more  or  less  allied  genera  in  the  lakes  of 
Lapland,  seems  to  be  due  to  the  supply  of  food  provided  for  them  by  the 
swarms  of  insects  which  in  the  larva  state  inhabit  the  waters,  or,  in  other 
stages  of  their  life,  are  accidentally  swept  into  them.  All  travellers  in  the 
north  of  Europe  speak  of  the  gnat  and  the  mosquito  as  very  serious  draw 
backs  upon  the  enjoyments  of  the  summer  tourist,  who  visits  the  head  of 
the  Gulf  of  Bothnia  to  see  the  midnight  sun,  and  the  brothers  Loestadiua 
regard  them  as  one  of  the  great  plagues  of  sub-Arctic  life.  "  The  persecu 
tions  of  these  insects,"  says  Lars  Levi  L&stadius  [Culex  pipiens,  Culcx  rep- 
taw,  and  Culex  pulicaris],  "  leave  not  a  moment's  peace,  by  day  or  night, 
to  any  living  creature.  Not  only  man,  but  cattle,  and  even  birds  and  wild 
'beasts,  suffer  intolerably  from  their  bite."  He  adds  in  a  note,  "  I  will  not 
affirm  that  they  have  ever  devoured  a  living  man,  but  many  young  cattle, 
such  as  lambs  and  calves,  have  been  worried  out  of  their  lives  by  them. 
All  the  people  of  Lapland  declare  that  young  birds  are  killed  by  them,  and 
this  is  not  improbable,  for  birds  are  scarce  after  seasons  when  the  midge, 
the  gnat,  and  the  mosquito  are  numerous." — Om  Uppodlingar  i  Lappmar- 
ken,  p.  50. 

Petrus  Lsestadius  makes  similar  statements  in  his  Journal  for  forsta 
arct,  p.  285. 


INSECT   DESTROYERS WOODPECKERS.  109 

quito,  that  feeds  the  trout  that  preys  on  the  May  fly  that 
destroys  the  eggs  that  hatch  the  salmon  that  pampers  the  epi 
cure,  may  occasion  a  scarcity  of  this  latter  fish  in  waters  where 
he  would  otherwise  be  abundant.  Thus  all  nature  is  linked 
together  by  invisible  bonds,  and  every  organic  creature,  how 
ever  low,  however  feeble,  however  dependent,  is  necessary  to 
the  well-being  of  some  other  among  the  myriad  forms  of  life 
with  which  the  Creator  has  peopled  the  earth. 

I  have  said  that  man  has  promoted  the  increase  of  the 
insect  and  the  worm,  by  destroying  the  bird  and  the  fish 
which  feed  upon  them.  Many  insects,  in  the  four  different 
stages  of  their  growth,  inhabit  in  succession  the  earth,  the 
water,  and  the  air.  In  each  of  these  elements  they  have  their 
special  enemies,  and,  deep  and  dark  as  are  the  minute  recesses 
in  -which  they  hide  themselves,  they  are  pursued  to  the  re 
motest,  obscurest  corners  by  the  executioners  that  nature  has 
appointed  to  punish  their  delinquencies,  and  furnished  with 
cunning  contrivances  for  ferreting  out  the  offenders  and  drag 
ging  them  into  the  light  of  day.  One  tribe  of  birds,  the  wood 
peckers,  seems  to  depend  for  subsistence  almost  wholly  on 
those  insects  wrhich  breed  in  dead  or  dying  trees,  and  it  is, 
perhaps,  needless  to  say  that  the  injury  these  birds  do  the 
forest  is  imaginary.  They  do  not  cut  holes  in  the  trunk  of  the 
tree  to  prepare  a  lodgment  for  a  future  colony  of  boring  larvae, 
but  to  extract  the  worm  wilich  has  already  begun  his  mining 
labors.  Hence  these  birds  are  not  found  where  the  forester, 
removes  trees  as  fast  as  they  become  fit  habitations  for  such 
insects.  In  clearing  new  lands  in  the  United  States,  dead 
trees,  especially  of  the  spike-leaved  kinds,  too  much  decayed 
to  serve  for  timber,  and  which,  in  that  state,  are  worth  little, 
for  fuel,  are  often  allowed  to  stand  until  they  fall  of  them 
selves.  Such  stubs,  as  they  are  popularly  called,  are  filled 
with  borers,  and  often  deeply  cut  by  the  woodpeckers,  whose 
strong  bills  enable  them  to  penetrate  to  the  very  heart  of  the 
tree  and  drag  out  the  lurking  larvae.  After  a  few  years,  the 
stubs  fall,  or,  as  wood  becomes  valuable,  are  cut  and  carried 
off  for  firewood,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  farmer  selects  for 


110  INSECT   DESTROYERS — KEPTILES. 

felling,  in  the  forest  he  has  reserved  as  a  permanent  source  of 
supply  of  fuel  and  timber,  the  decaying  trees  which,  like  the 
dead  stems  in  the  fields,  serve  as  a  home  for  "both  the  worm 
and  his  pursuer.  We  thus  gradually  extirpate  this  tribe  of 
insects,  and,  with  them,  the  species  of  birds  which  subsist  prin 
cipally  upon  them.  Thus  the  fine,  large,  red-headed  wood 
pecker,  Picus  erythrocephaluS)  formerly  very  common  in  New 
England,  has  almost  entirely  disappeared  from  those  States, 
since  the  dead  trees  are  gone,  and  the  apples,  his  favorite  vege 
table  food,  are  less  abundant. 

There  are  even  large  quadrupeds  which  feed  almost  exclu 
sively  upon  insects.  The  ant  bear  is  strong  enough  to  pull 
down  the  clay  houses  built  by  the  species  of  termites  that 
constitute  his  ordinary  diet,  and  the-  curious  ai-ai,  a  climbing 
quadruped  of  Madagascar — of  which  I  believe  only  a  single 
specimen,  secured  by  Mr.  Sandwith,  has"  yet  reached  Europe — 
is  provided  with  a  very  slender,  hook-nailed  finger,  long  enough 
to  reach  far  into  a  hole  in  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  and  extract  the 
worm  which  bored  it. 

Reptiles. 

But  perhaps  the  most  formidable  foes  of  the  insect,  and 
even  of  the  small  rodents,  are  the  reptiles.  The  chameleon 
approaches  the  insect  perched  upon  the  twig  of  a  tree,  with  an 
almost  imperceptible  slowness  of  motion,  until,  at  the  distance 
of  a  foot,  he  shoots  out  his  long,  slimy  tongue,  and  rarely  fails 
to  secure  the  victim.  Even  the  slow  toad  catches  the  swift 
and  wary  housefly  in  the  same  manner ;  and  in  the  warm 
countries  of  Europe,  the  numerous  lizards  contribute  very 
essentially  to  the  reduction  of  the  insect  population,  which 
'they  both  surprise  in  the  winged  state  upon  walls  and  trees, 
and  consume  as  egg,  worm,  and  chrysalis,  in  their  earlier  meta 
morphoses.  The  serpents  feed  much  upon  insects,  as  well  as 
upon  mice,  moles,  and  small  reptiles,  including  also  other 
snakes.  The  disgust  and  fear  with  which  the  serpent  is  so 
universally  regarded  expose  him  to  constant  persecution  by 
man,  and  perhaps  no  other  animal  is  so  relentlessly  sacrificed 


EXTIRPATION   OF   SERPENTS.  lit 

by  him.  In  temperate  climates,  snakes  are  consumed  by 
scarcely  any  beast  or  bird  of  prey  except  the  stork,  and  they 
have  few  dangerous  enemies  but  man,  though  in  the  tropics 
other  animals  prey  upon  them.*  It  is  doubtful  whether  any 
species  of  serpent  has  been  exterminated  within  the  human 
period,  and  even  the  dense  population  of  China  has  not  been 
able  completely  to  rid  itself  of  the  viper.  They  have,  however, 
almost  entirely  disappeared  from  particular  localities.  The 
rattlesnake  is  now  wholly  unknown  in  many  large  districts 
where  it  was  extremely  common  half  a  century  ago,  and  Pal 
estine  has  long  been,  if  not  absolutely  free  from  venomous 
serpents,  at  least  very  nearly  so.f 

Destruction  of  Fish. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  waters  seem  comparatively  secure 
from  human  pursuit  or  interference  by  the  inaccessibility  of 
their  retreats,  and  by  our  ignorance  of  their  habits — a  natural 

*  It  is  very  questionable  whether  there  is  any  foundation  for  the  pop 
ular  belief  in  the  hostility  of  swine  and  of  deer  to  the  rattlesnake,  and 
careful  experiments  as  to  the  former  quadruped  seem  to  show  that  the  sup 
posed  enmity  is  wholly  imaginary.  Observing  that  the  starlings,  stornelli, 
which  bred  in  an  old  tower  in  Piedmont,  carried  something  from  their 
nests  and  dropped  it  upon  the  ground,  about  as  often  as  they  brought  food 
to  their  young,  I  watched  their  proceedings,  and  found  every  day  lying 
near  the  tower  numbers  of  dead  or  dying  slow  worms,  and,  in  a  few  cases, 
small  lizards,  which  had,  in  every  instance,  lost  about  two  inches  of  the 
tail.  This  part  I  believe  the  starlings  gave  to  their  nestlings,  and  threw 
away  the  remainder. 

t  Russell  denies  the  existence  of  poisonous  snakes  in  Northern  Syria, 
nnd  states  that  the  last  instance  of  death  known  to  have  occurred  from  the 
bite  of  a  serpent  near  Aleppo  took  place  a  hundred  years  before  his  time. 
In  Palestine,  the  climate,  the  thinness  of  population,  the  multitude  of 
insects  and  of  lizards,  all  circumstances,  in  fact,  seem  very  favorable  to  tho 
multiplication  of  serpents,  but  the  venomous  species,  at  least,  are  extremely 
rare,  if  at  all  known,  in  that  country.  I  have,  however,  been  assured  by 
persons  very  familiar  with  Mount  Lebanon,  that  cases  of  poisoning  from 
the  bite  of  snakes  had  occurred  within  a  few  years,  near  Hasbeiyeh,  and  at 
cthar  places  on  the  southern  declivities  of  Lebanon  and  Hermon.  In 


112  WHALE   FISHERY. 

result  of  die  difficulty  of  observing  the  ways  of  creatures  living 
in  a  medium  in  which,  we  cannot  exist.  Human  agency  has, 
nevertheless,  both  directly  and  incidentally,  produced  great 
I  changes  in  the  population  of  the  sea,  the  lakes,  and  the  rivers, 
and  if  the  effects  of  such  revolutions  in  aquatic  life  are  appar 
ently  of  small  importance  in  general  geography,  they  are  still 
not  wholly  inappreciable.  The  great  diminution  in  the  abun 
dance  of  the  larger  fish  employed  for  food  or  pursued  for  prod 
ucts  useful  in  the  arts  is  familiar,  and  when  we  consider  how  the 
vegetable  and  animal  life  on  which  they  feed  must  be  affected 
by  the  reduction  of  their  numbers,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  their 
destruction  may  involve  considerable  modifications  in  many 
of  the  material  arrangements  of  nature.  The  whale  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  an  object  of  pursuit  by  the  ancients,  for 
any  purpose,  nor  do  we  know  when  the  whale  fishery  first 
commenced.*  It  was,  however,  very  actively  prosecuted  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  Biscay ans  seem  to  have  been  partic 
ularly  successful  in  this  as  indeed  in  other  branches  of  nautical 
industry. f  Five  hundred  years  ago,  whales  abounded  in  every 

Egypt,  on  the  other  hand,  the  cohra,  the  asp,  and  the  cerastes  are  as 
numerous  as  ever,  and  are  much  dreaded  by  all  the  natives,  except  the 
professional  snake  charmers.  See  Appendix,  No.  IT. 

*  I  use  whale  not  in  a  technical  sense,  but  as  a  generic  term  for  all  the 
large  inhabitants  of  the  sea  popularly  grouped  under  that  name. 

t  From  the  narrative  of  Ohther,  introduced  by  King  Alfred  into  his 
translation  of  Orosius,  it  is  clear  that  the  Northmen  pursued  the  whale 
fishery  in  the  ninth  century,  and  it  appears,  both  from  the  poem  called 
The  Whale,  in  the  Codex  Exoniensis,  and  from  the  dialogue  with  the  fish 
erman  in  the  Colloquies  of  Aelfric,  that  the  Anglo-Saxons  followed  this 
dangerous  chase  at  a  period  not  much  later.  I  am  not  aware  of  any  evi 
dence  to  show  that  any  of  the  Latin  nations  engaged  in  this  fishery  until 
a  century  or  two  afterward,  though  it  may  not  be  easy  to  disprove  their 
earlier  participation  in  it.  In  mediaeval  literature,  Latin  and  Romance, 
very  frequent  mention  is  made  of  a  species  of  vessel  called  in  Latin,  ~bale- 
neria,  lalenerium,  lalenerms,  lalaneria,  etc. ;  in  Catalan,  lalener ;  in  French, 
~balenier  ;  all  of  which  words  occur  in  many  other  forms.  The  most  obvious 
etymology  of  these  words  would  suggest  the  meaning,  whaler,  laleinier  ; 
but  some  have  supposed  that  the  name  was  descriptive  of  the  great  size 
of  the  ships,  and  others  have  referred  it  to  a  different  root.  From  the 


FOOD  OF  THE   WHALE.  113 

sea.  They  long  since  became  so  rare  in  the  Mediterranean 
as  not  to  afford  encouragement  for  the  fishery  as  a  regular 
occupation  ;  and  the  great  demand  for  oil  and  whalebone  for 
mechanical  and  manufacturing  purposes,  in  the  present  cen 
tury,  has  stimulated  the  pursuit  of  the  "  Imgest  of  living  crea 
tures  "  to  such  activity,  that  he  has  now  almost  wholly  disap 
peared  from  many  favorite  fishing  grounds,  and  in  others  is 
greatly  diminished  in  numbers. 

What  special  functions,  besides  his  uses  to  man,  are  as 
signed  to  the  whale  in  the  economy  of  nature,  we  -do  not 
know  ;  but  some  considerations,  suggested  by  the  character  of 
the  food  upon  which  certain  species  subsist,  deserve  to  be 
specially  noticed.  None  of  the  great  mammals  grouped  under 
the  general  name  of  whale  are  rapacious.  They  all  live  upon 
small  organisms,  and  the  most  numerous  species  feed  almost 
wholly  upon  the  soft  gelatinous  mollusks  in  which  the  sea 
abounds  in  all  latitudes.  We  cannot  calculate  even  approxi 
mately  the  number  of  the  whales,  or  the  quantity  of  organic 
nutriment  consumed  by  an  individual,  and  of  course  we  can 
form  no  estimate  of  the  total  amount  of  animal  matter  with 
drawn  by  them,  in  a  given  period,  from  the  waters  of  the  sea. 
It  is  certain,  however,  that  it  must  have  been  enormous  when 
they  were  more  abundant,  and  that  it  is  still  very  considerable. 
A  very  few  years  since,  the  United  States  had  more  than  six 
hundred  whaling  ships  constantly  employed  in  the  Pacific, 
and  the  product  of  the  American  whale  fishery  for  the  year 
ending  June  1st,  I860,  was  seven  millions  and  a  half  of  dol 
lars.*  The  mere  bulk  of  the  whales  destroyed  in  a  single  year 

fourteenth  century,  the  word  occurs  oftener,  perhaps,  in  old  Catalan,  than 
in  any  other  language  ;  hut  Capmany  does  not  notice  the  whale  fishery  as 
one  of  the  maritime  pursuits  of  the  very  enterprising  Catalan  people,  nor 
do  I  find  any  of  the  products  of  the  whale  mentioned  in  the  old  Catalan 
tariffs.  The  whalebone  of  the  mediaeval  writers,  which  is  described  as  very 
white,  is  doubtless  the  ivory  of  the  walrus  or  of  the  narwhale. 

*  In  consequence  of  the  great  scarcity  of  the  whale,  the  use  of  coal  gas 
for  illumination,  the  substitution  of  other  fatty  and  oleaginous  substances, 
such  as  lard,  palm  oil,  and  petroleum,  for  right-whale  oil  and  spermaceti, 
the  whale  fishery  has  rapidly  fallen  off  within  a  few  years.  The  great 


114:  PHOSPHORESCENCE   OF  THE   SEA. 

by  the  American  and  the  European  vessels  engaged  in  this 
fishery  would  form  an  island  of  no  inconsiderable  dimensions, 
and  each  one  of  those  taken  must  have  consumed,  in  the 
course  of  his  growth,  many  times  his  own  weight  of  mollusks. 
The  destruction  of  the  whales  must  have  been  followed  by  a 
proportional  increase  of  the  organisms  they  feed  upon,  and  if 
we  had  the  means  of  comparing  the  statistics  of  these  humble 
forms  of  life,  for  even  so  short  a  period  as  that  between  the 
years  1760  and  1860,  we  should  find  a  difference  sufficient, 
possibly,  to  suggest  an  explanation  of  some  phenomena  at 
present  unaccounted  for. 

For  instance,  as  I  have  observed  in  another  work,*  the 
phosphorescence  of  the  sea  was  unknown  to  ancient  writers,  or 
at  least  scarcely  noticed  by  them,  and  even  Homer — who, 
blind  as  tradition  makes  him  when  he  composed  his  epics,  had 
seen,  and  marked,  in  earlier  life,  all  that  the  glorious  nature 
of  the  Mediterranean  and  its  coasts  discloses  to  unscientific 
observation — nowhere  alludes  to  this  most  beautiful  and  strik 
ing  of  maritime  wonders.  In  the  passage  just  referred  to,  I 
have  endeavored  to  explain  the  silence  of  ancient  writers  with 
respect  to  this  as  well  as  other  remarkable  phenomena  on  psy 
chological  grounds ;  but  is  it  not  possible  that,  in  modern  times, 
the  animalcules  which  produce  it  may  have  immensely  multi 
plied,  from  the  destruction  of  their  natural  enemies  by  man, 
and  hence  that  the  gleam  shot  forth  by  their  decomposition,  or 
by  their  living  processes,  is  both  more  frequent  and  more  brill 
iant  than  in  the  days  of  classic  antiquity  ? 

Although  the  whale  does  not  prey  upon  smaller  creatures 
resembling  himself  in  form  and  habits,  yet  true  fishes  are 
extremely  voracious,  and  almost  every  tribe  devours  unspar- 

snpply  of  petroleum,  which,  is  much  used  for  lubricating  machinery  as  well 
as  for  numerous  other  purposes,  has  produced  a  more  perceptible  effect  on 
the  whale  fishery  than  any  other  single  circumstance.  According  to  Bige- 
low,  Les  Etats  Unis  en  1863,  p.  346,  the  American  whaling  fleet  was 
diminished  by  29  in  1858,  5V  in  1860,  94  in  1861,  and  65  in  1862.  The 
present  number  of  American  ships  employed  in  that  fishery  is  353. 
*  The  Origin  and  History  of  the  English  Language,  &c.,  pp.  423,  424. 


DESTKUCTION   OF   FISH.  115 

ingly  the  feebler  species,  and  even  the  spawn  and  young  of  its 
own.  The  enormous  destruction  of  the  pike,  the  trout  family, 
and  other  ravenous  fish,  as  well  as  of  the  fishing  birds,  the  seal, 
and  the  otter,  by  man,  would  naturally  have  occasioned  a  great 
increase  in  the  weaker  and  more  defenceless  fish  on  which  they 
feed,  had  he  not  been  as  hostile  to  them  also  as  to  their  perse 
cutors.  WQ  have  little  evidence  that  any  fish  employed  as 
human  food  has  naturally  multiplied  in  modern  times,  while 
all  the  more  valuable  tribes  have  been  immensely  reduced  in 
numbers.*  This  reduction  must  have  affected  the  more  vora 
cious  species  not  used  as  food  by  man,  and  accordingly  the 
shark,  and  other  fish  of  similar  habits,  though  not  objects  of 
systematic  pursuit,  are  now  comparatively  rare  in  many  waters 
where  they  formerly  abounded.  The  result  is,  that  man  has 
greatly  reduced  the  numbers  of  all  larger  marine  animals, 
and  consequently  indirectly  favored  the  multiplication  of  the 
smaller  aquatic  organisms  which  entered  into  their  nutriment. 
This  change  in  the  relations  of  the  organic  and  inorganic 
matter  of  the  sea  must  have  exercised  an  influence  on  the  lat 
ter.  What  that  influence  has  been,  we  cannot  say,  still  less 


*  Among  the  unexpected  results  of  human  action,  the  destruction  or 
multiplication  of  fish,  as  well  as  of  other  animals,  is  a  not  unfrequent  oc 
currence.  I  shall  have  occasion  to  mention  on  a  following  page  the  exter 
mination  of  the  fish  in  a  Swedish  river  by  a  flood  occasioned  by  the  sudden 
discharge  of  the  waters  of  a  pond.  Williams,  in  his  History  of  Vermont, 
i,  p.  149,  quoted  in  Thompson's  Natural  History  of  Vermont,  p.  142, 
records  a  case  of  the  increase  of  trout  from  an  opposite  cause.  In  a  pond 
formed  hy  damming  a  small  stream  to  ohtain  water  power  for  a  sawmill, 
and  covering  one  thousand  acres  of  primitive  forest,  the  increased  supply 
of  food  brought  within  reach  of  the  fish  multiplied  them  to  that  degree, 
that,  at  the  head  of  the  pond,  where,  in  the  spring,  they  crowded  together 
in  the  brook  which  supplied  it,  they  were  taken  by  the  hands  at  pleasure, 
and  swine  caught  them  without  difficulty.  A  single  sweep  of  a  small 
scoopnet  would  bring  up  half  a  bushel,  carts  were  filled  with  them  as  fast 
as  if  picked  up  on  dry  land,  and  in  the  fishing  season  they  were  commonly 
Bold  at  a  shilling  (eightpence  halfpenny,  or  about  seventeen  cents)  a  bushel. 
The  increase  in  the  size  of  the  trout  was  as  remarkable  as  the  multipli 
cation  of  their  numbers. 


116  INTRODUCTION   OF   FOREIGN   FISH. 

can  we  predict  what  it  will  be  hereafter ;  but  its  action  is  not 
for  that  reason  the  less  certain. 


Introduction  and  Breeding  of  Fish. 

The  introduction  and  successful  breeding  of  fish  of  foreign 
species  appears  to  have  been  long  practised  in  China  and  was 
not  unknown  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  This  art  has  been 
revived  in  modern  times,  but  thus  far  without  any  important 
results,  economical  or  physical,  though  there  seems  to  be  good 
reason  to  believe  it  may  be  employed  with  advantage  on  an 
extended  scale.  As  in  the  case  of  plants,  man  has  sometimes 
undesignedly  introduced  new  species  of  aquatic  animals  into 
countries  distant  from  their  birthplace.  The  accidental  escape 
of  the  Chinese  goldfish  from  ponds  where  they  were  bred  as  a 
garden  ornament,  has  peopled  some  European,  and  it  is  said 
American  streams  with  this  species.  Canals  of  navigation  and 
irrigation  interchange  the  fish  of  lakes  and  rivers  widely  sepa 
rated  by  natural  barriers,  as  well  as  the  plants  which  drop 
their  seeds  into  the  waters.  The  Erie  Canal,  as  measured  by 
its  own  channel,  has  a  length  of  about  three  hundred  and  sixty 
miles,  and  it  has  ascending  and  descending  locks  in  both  direc 
tions.  By  this  route,  the  fresh-water  fish  of  the  Hudson  and 
the  Upper  Lakes,  and  some  of  the  indigenous  vegetables  of 
these  respective  basins,  have  intermixed,  and  the  fauna  and 
flora  of  the  two  regions  have  now  more  species  common  to 
both  than  before  the  canal  was  opened.  Some  accidental 
attraction  not  unfrequently  induces  fish  to  follow  a  vessel  for 
days  in  succession,  and  they  may  thus  be  enticed  into  zones 
very  distant  from  their  native  habitat.  Several  years  ago,  I 
was  told  at  Constantinople,  upon  good  authority,  that  a  couple 
of  fish,  of  a  species  wholly  unknown  to  the  natives,  had  Just 
been  taken  in  the  Bosphorus.  They  were  alleged  to  have  fol 
lowed  an  English  ship  from  the  Thames,  and  to  have  been  fre 
quently  observed  by  the  crew  during  the  passage,  but  I  was 
unable  to  learn  their  specific  character. 

Many  of  the  fish  which  pass  the  greater  part  of  the  year  in 


NATURALIZATION  OF  AQUATIC  ANIMALS — BEDS  OF  SHELLS.     117 

salt  water  spawn  in  fresh,  and  some  fresh-water  species,  the 
common  brook  trout  of  Xew  England  for  instance,  which, 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  never  visit  the  sea,  will,  if  trans 
ferred  to  brooks  emptying  directly  into  the  ocean,  go  down 
into  the  salt  water  after  spawning  time,  and  return  again  the 
next  season.  Sea  fish,  the  smelt  among  others,  are  said  to 
have  been  naturalized  in  fresh  water,  and  some  naturalists 
have  argued  from  the  character  of  the  fish  of  Lake  Baikal,  and 
especially  from  the  existence  of  the  seal  in  that  locality,  that 
all  its  inhabitants  were  originally  marine  species,  and  have 
changed  their  habits  with  the  gradual  conversion  of  the 
saline  waters  of  the  lake — once,  as  is  assumed,  a  maritime  bay 
— into  fresh.*  The  presence  of  the  seal  is  hardly  conclusive  on 
this  point,  for  it  is  sometimes  seen  in  Lake  Champlain  at  the 
distance  of  some  hundreds  of  miles  from  even  brackish  water. 
One  of  these  animals  was  killed  on  the  ice  in  that  lake  in  Feb 
ruary,  1810,  another  in  February,  1846, f  and  remains  of  the 
seal  have  been  found  at  other  times  in  the  same  waters. 

The  remains  of  the  higher  orders  of  aquatic  animals  are 
generally  so  perishable  that,  even  where  most  abundant,  they 
do  not  appear  to  be  now  forming  permanent  deposits  of  any 
considerable  magnitude ;  but  it  is  quite  otherwise  with  shell 
fish,  and,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  with  many  of  the  minute 
limeworkers  of  the  sea.  There  are,  on  the  southern  coast  of 
the  United  States,  beds  of  shells  so  extensive  that  they  were 
formerly  supposed  to  have  been  naturally  accumulated,  and 
were  appealed  to  as  proofs  of  an  elevation  of  the  coast  by  geo 
logical  causes ;  but  they  are  now  ascertained  to  have  been 
derived  from  oysters,  consumed  in  the  course  of  long  ages  by 

*  BABXXET,  Etudes  et  Lectures,  ii,  pp.  108,  110. 

t  THOMPSON,  Natural  History  of  Vermont,  p.  38,  and  Appendix,  p.  13. 
There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  seal  breeds  in  Lake  Chainplain,  but 
the  individual  last  taken  there  must  have  been  some  weeks,  at  least,  in  its 
waters.  It  was  killed  on  the  ice  in  the  widest  part  of  the  lake,  on  the  23d 
of  February,  thirteen  days  after  the  surface  was  entirely  frozen,  except  the 
usual  small  cracks,  and  a  month  or  two  after  the  ice  closed  at  all  points 
north  of  the  place  where  the  seal  was  found. 


118  FISH   BREEDING. 

the  inhabitants  of  Indian  towns.  The  planting  of  a  bed  of 
oysters  in  a  new  locality  might,  very  probably,  lead,  in  time, 
to  the  formation  of  a  bank,  which,  in  connection  with  other 
deposits,  might  perceptibly  affect  the  line  of  a  coast,  or,  by 
changing  the  course  of  marine  currents,  or  the  outlet  of  a 
river,  produce  geographical  changes  of  no  small  importance. 
The  transplantation  of  oysters  to  artificial  ponds  has  long  been 
common,  and  it  appears  to  have  recently  succeeded  well  on  a 
large  scale  in  the  open  sea  on  the  French  coast.  A  great 
extension  of  this  fishery  is  hoped  for,  and  it  is  now  proposed  to 
introduce  upon  the  same  coast  the  American  soft  clam,  which 
is  so  abundant  in  the  tide-washed  beach  sands  of  Long  Isand 
Sound  as  to  form  an  important  article  in  the  diet  of  the  neigh 
boring  population. 

The  intentional  naturalization  of  foreign  fish,  as  I  have  said, 
has  not  thus  far  yielded  important  fruits  ;  but  though  this  par 
ticular  branch  of  what  is  called,  not  very  happily,  pisciculture, 
has  not  yet  established  its  claims  to  the  attention  of  the  phys 
ical  geographer  or  the  political  economist,  the  artificial  breed 
ing  of  domestic  fish  has  already  produced  very  valuable  results, 
and  is  apparently  destined  to  occupy  an  extremely  conspicuous 
place  in  the  history  of  man's  efforts  to  compensate  his  prodigal 
waste  of  the  gifts  of  nature.  The  restoration  of  the  primitive 
abundance  of  salt  and  fresh  water  fish,  is  one  of  the  greatest 
material  benefits  that,  with  our  present  physical  resources, 
governments  can  hope  to  confer  upon  their  subjects.  The 
rivers,  lakes,  and  seacoasts  once  restocked,  and  protected  by 
law  from  exhaustion  by  taking  fish  at  improper  seasons,  by 
destructive  methods,  and  in  extravagant  quantities,  would 
continue  indefinitely  to  furnish  a  very  large  supply  of  most 
healthful  food,  which,  unlike  all  domestic  and  agricultural 
products,  would  spontaneously  renew  itself  and  cost  nothing 
but  the  taking.  There  are  many  sterile  or  wornout  soils  in 
Europe  so  situated  that  they  might,  at  no  very  formidable 
cost,  be  converted  into  permanent  lakes,  which  would  serve  not 
only  as  reservoirs  to  retain  the  water  of  winter  rains  and  snow, 
and  give  it  out  in  the  dry  season  for  irrigation,  but  as  breed- 


EXTIEPATION   OF   AQUATIC   ANIMALS.  119 

ing  ponds  for  fish,  and  would  thus,  without  further  cost,  yield 
a  larger  supply  of  human  food  than  can  at  present  he  ohtained 
from  them  even  at  a  great  expenditure  of  capital  and  labor  in 
agricultural  operations.  The  additions  which  might  he  made 
to  the  nutriment  of  the  civilized  world  by  a  judicious  admin 
istration  of  the  resources  of  the  waters,  would  allow  some 
restriction  of  the  amount  of  soil  at  present  employed  for  agri 
cultural  purposes,  and  a  corresponding  extension  of  the  area 
of  the  forest,  and  would  thus  facilitate  a  return  to  primitive 
geographical  arrangements  which  it  is  important  partially  to 
restore. 

Extirpation  of  Aquatic  Animals. 

It  does  not  seem  probable  that  man,  with  all  his  rapacity 
and  all  his  enginery,  will  succeed  in  totally  extirpating  any 
salt-water  fish,  but  he  has  already  exterminated  at  least  one 
marine  warm-blooded  animal — Steller's  sea  cow — and  the 
walrus,  the  sea  lion,  and  other  large  amphibia,  as  well  as  the 
principal  fishing  quadrupeds,  are  in  imminent  danger  of  ex 
tinction.  Steller's  sea  cow,  Hhytina  jStelleri,  was  first  seen  by 
Europeans  in  the  year  1741,  on  Bering's  Island.  It  was  a 
huge  amphibious  mammal,  weighing  not  less  than  eight  thou 
sand  pounds,  and  appears  to  have  been  confined  exclusively  to 
the  islands  and  coasts  in  the  neighborhood  of  Bering's  Strait. 
Its  flesh  was  very  palatable,  and  the  localities  it  frequented 
were  easily  accessible  from  the  Russian,  establishments  in 
Kamtschatka.  As  soon  as  its  existence  and  character,  and  the 
abundance  of  fur  animals  in  the  same  waters,  were  made 
known  to  the  occupants  of  those  posts  by  the  return  of  the 
survivors  of  Bering's  expedition,  so  active  a  chase  was  com 
menced  against  the  amphibia  of  that  region,  that,  in  the  course 
of  twenty-seven  years,  the  sea  cow,  described  by  Steller  as 
extremely  numerous  in  17-11,  is  believed  to  have  been  com 
pletely  extirpated,  not  a  single  individual  having  been  seen 
since  the  year  1768.  The  various  tribes  of  seals  in  the  North 
ern  and  Southern  Pacific,  the  walrus  and  the  sea  otter,  are 
already  so  reduced  in  numbers  that  they  seem  destined  soon 


120  DESTRUCTION   OF   FISH    BY   MAN. 

to  follow  the  sea  cow,  unless  protected  by  legislation  stringent 
enough,  and  a  police  energetic  enough,  to  repress  the  ardent 
cupidity  of  their  pursuers. 

The  seals,  the  otter  tribe,  and  many  other  amphibia  which 
feed  almost  exclusively  upon  fish,  are  extremely  voracious,  and 
of  course  their  destruction  or  numerical  reduction  must  have 
favored  the  multiplication  of  the  species  of  fish  principally 
preyed  upon  by  them.  I  have  been  assured  by  the  keeper  of 
several  tamed  seals  that,  if  supplied  at  frequent  intervals,  each 
seal  would  devour  not  less  than  fourteen  pounds  of  fish,  or 
about  a  quarter  of  his  own  weight,  in  a  day.*  A  very  intel 
ligent  and  observing  hunter,  who  has  passed  a  great  part  of  his 
life  in  the  forest,  after  carefully  watching  the  habits  of  the 
fresh-water  otter  of  the  Northern  American  States,  estimates 
their  consumption  of  fish  at  about  four  pounds  per  day. 

Man  has  promoted  the  multiplication  of  fish  by  making 
war  on  their  brute  enemies,  but  he  has  by  no  means  thereby 
compensated  his  own  greater  destructiveness.f  The  bird  and 
beast  of  prey,  whether  on  land  or  in  the  water,  hunt  only  as 
long  as  they  feel  the  stimulus  of  hunger,  their  ravages  are 
limited  by  the  demands  of  present  appetite,  and  they  do  not 
wastefully  destroy  what  they  cannot  consume.  Man,  on  the 

*  See  page  89,  note,  ante. 

t  According  to  llartwig,  the  United  Provinces  of  Holland  had,  in  1618, 
three  thousand  herring  busses  and  nine  thousand  vessels  engaged  in  the 
transport  of  these  fish  to  market.  The  whole  number  of  persons  employed 
in  the  Dutch  herring  fishery  was  computed  at  200,000. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  this  fishery  was  most  suc 
cessfully  prosecuted  by  the  Swedes,  and  in  1781,  the  town  of  Gottenburg 
alone  exported  136,649  barrels,  each  containing  1,200  herrings,  making  a 
total  of  about  164,000,000;  but  so  rapid  was  the  exhaustion  of  the  fish, 
from  this  keen  pursuit,  that  in  1799  it  was  found  necessary  to  prohibit  the 
exportation  of  them  altogether. — Das  Leben  des  Meeres,  p.  182. 

In  1855,  the  British  fisheries  produced  900,000  barrels,  or  enough  to 
supply  a  fish  to  every  human  inhabitant  of  the  globe. 

On  the  shores  of  Long  Island  Sound,  the  white  fish,  a  species  of  herring 
too  bony  to  be  easily  eaten,  is  used  as  manure  in  very  great  quantities. 
Ten  thousand  are  employed  as  a  dressing  for  an  acre,  and  a  single  net  has 
sometimes  taken  200,000  in  a  day.—  DWIGHT'S  Travels,  ii,  pp.  512,  515. 


FISH   ARTIFICIALLY    FATTENED    INFERIOR.  121 

contrary,  angles  to-day  that  he  may  dine  to-morrow ;  he  takes 
and  dries  millions  of  lish  on  the  banks  of  Newfoundland,  that 
the  fervent  Catholic  of  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  may 
have  wherewithal  to  satisfy  the  cravings  of  the  stomach  during 
next  year's  Lent,  without  imperilling  his  soul  by  violating  the 
discipline  of  the  papal  church ;  and  all  the  arrangements  of 
his  fisheries  are  so  organized  as  to  involve  the  destruction  of 
many  more  fish  than  are  secured  for  human  use,  and  the  loss 
of  a  large  proportion  of  the  annual  harvest  of  the  sea  in  the 
process  of  curing,  or  in  transportation  to  the  places  of  its 
consumption.* 

Fish  are  more  affected  than  quadrupeds  by  slight  and  even 
imperceptible  differences  in  their  breeding  places  and  feeding 
grounds.  Every  river,  every  brook,  every  lake  stamps  a  spe 
cial  character  upon  its  salmon,  its  shad,  and  its  trout,  which  is 
at  once  recognized  by  those  who  deal  in  or  consume  them. 
1>  j  skill  can  give  the  fish  fattened  by  food  selected  and  pre 
pared  by  man  the  flavor  of  those  which  are  nourished  at  the 
table  of  nature,  and  the  trout  of  the  artificial  ponds  in  Ger 
many  and  Switzerland  are  so  inferior  to  the  brook  fish  of  the 
same  species  and  climate,  that  it  is  hard  to  believe  them  iden 
tical.  The  superior  sapidity  of  the  American  trout  to  the 

*  The  indiscriminate  hostility  of  man  to  inferior  forms  of  animated  life 
is  little  creditable  to  modern  civilization,  and  it  is  painful  to  reflect  that  it 
becomes  keener  and  more  unsparing  in  proportion  to  the  refinement  of  the 
race.  The  savage  slays  no  animal,  not  even  the  rattlesnake,  wantonly ; 
and  the  Turk,  whom  we  call  a  barbarian,  treats  the  dumb  beast  as  gently 
as  a  child.  One  cannot  live  many  weeks  in  Turkey  without  witnessing 
touching  instances  of  the  kindness  of  the  people  to  the  lower  animals,  and 
I  have  found  it  very  difficult  to  induce  even  the  boys  to  catch  lizards  and 
other  reptiles  for  preservation  as  specimens.  See  Appendix,  No.  18. 

The  fearless  confidence  in  man,  so  generally  manifested  by  wild  animals 
in  newly  discovered  islands,  ought  to  have  inspired  a  gentler  treatment  of 
them ;  but  a  very  few  years  of  the  relentless  pursuit,  to  which  they  are 
immediately  subjected,  suffice  to  make  them  as  timid  as  the  wildest  inhab 
itants  of  the  European  forest.  This  timidity,  however,  may  easily  be  over 
come.  The  squirrels  introduced  by  Mayor  Smith  into  the  public  parks  of 
Boston  are  so  tame  as  to  feed  from  the  hands  of  passengers,  and  they  not 
tmfrequently  enter  the  neighboring  houses. 


122        MAN    SPECIALLY    DESTRUCTIVE   TO   AQUATIC    ANIMALS, 

European  species,  which  is  familiar  to  every  one  acquainted 
with  both  continents,  is  probably  due  less  to  specific  difference 
than  to  the  fact  that,  even  in  the  parts  of  the  New  World 
which  have  been  longest  cultivated,  wild  nature  is  not  yet 
tamed  down  to  the  character  it  has  assumed  in  the  Old,  and 
which  it  will  acquire  in  America  also  when  her  civilization 
shall  be  as  ancient  as  is  now  that  of  Europe. 

Man  has  hitherto  hardly  anywhere  produced  such  climatic 
or  other  changes  as  would  suffice  of  themselves  totally  to  banish 
the  wild  inhabitants  of  the  dry  land,  and  the  disappearance  oi 
the  native  birds  and  quadrupeds  from  particular  localities  is  to 
be  ascribed  quite  as  much  to  his  direct  persecutions  as  to  the 
want  of  forest  shelter,  of  appropriate  food,  or  of  other  conditions 
indispensable  to  their  existence.  But  almost  all  the  processes 
of  agriculture,  and  of  mechanical  and  chemical  industry,  are 
fatally  destructive  to  aquatic  animals  within  reach  of  their 
influence.  When,  in  consequence  of  clearing  the  woods,  the 
changes  already  described  as  thereby  produced  in  the  beds 
and  currents  of  rivers,  are  in  progress,  the  spawning  grounds 
of  fish  are  exposed  from  year  to  year  to  a  succession  of  me 
chanical  disturbances  ;  the  temperature  of  the  water  is  higher 
in  summer,  colder  in  winter,  than  when  it  was  shaded  and 
protected  by  wood ;  the  smaller  organisms,  which  formed  the 
sustenance  of  the  young  fry,  disappear  or  are  reduced  in  num 
bers,  and  new  enemies  are  added  to  the  old  foes  that  preyed 
upon  them  ;  the  increased  turbidness  of  the  water  in  the 
annual  inundations  chokes  the  fish ;  and,  finally,  the  quick 
ened  velocity  of  its  current  sweeps  them  down  into  the  larger 
rivers  or  into  the  sea,  before  they  are  yet  strong  enough  to 
support  so  great  a  change  of  circumstances.""  Industrial  oper- 

*  A  fact  mentioned  by  Schubert — and  which  in  its  causes  and  many  of 
its  results  corresponds  almost  precisely  with  those  connected  with  the 
escape  of  Barton  Pond  in  Vermont,  so  well  known  to  geological  students — 
is  important,  as  showing  that  the  diminution  of  the  fish  in  rivers  exposed 
to  inundations  is  chiefly  to  be  ascribed  to  the  mechanical  action  of  the 
current,  and  not  mainly,  as  some  have  supposed,  to  changes  of  temperature 
occasioned  by  clearing.  Onr  author  states  that,  in  1796,  a  terrible  imin- 


MINUTE   ORGANISMS.  123 

ations  are  not  less  destructive  to  fish  winch  live  or  spawn  in 
fresh  water.  Mill  dams  impede  their  migrations,  if  they  do 
not  absolutely  prevent  them,  the  sawdust  from  lumber  mills 
clogs  their  gills,  and  the  thousand  deleterious  mineral  sub 
stances,  discharged  into  rivers  from  metallurgical,  chemical, 
and  manufacturing  establishments,  poison  them  by  shoals. 

Minute  Organisms. 

Besides  the  larger  creatures  of  the  land  and  of  the  sea,  the 
quadrupeds,  the  reptiles,  the  birds,  the  amphibia,  the  crus- 
tacea,  the  fish,  the  insects,  and  the  worms,  there  are  other 
c  3untless  forms  of  vital  being.  Earth,  water,  the  ducts  and 
fluids  of  vegetable  and  of  animal  life,  the  very  air  we  breathe, 
are  peopled  by  minute  organisms  which  perform  most  import 
ant  functions  in  both  the  living  and  the  inanimate  kingdoms 
of  nature.  Of  the  offices  assigned  to  these  creatures,  the  most 

O 

familiar  to  common  observation  is  the  extraction  of  lime,  and 
more  rarely,  of  silex,  from  the  waters  inhabited  by  them,  and 
the  deposit  of  these  minerals  in  a  solid  form,  either  as  the 
material  of  their  habitations  or  as  the  exuviae  of  their  bodies. 
The  microscope  and  other  means  of  scientific  observation 
assure  us  that  the  chalk  beds  of  England  and  of  France,  the 
coral  reefs  of  marine  waters  in  warm  climates,  vast  calcareous 
and  silicious  deposits  in  the  sea  and  in  many  fresh-water 
ponds,  the  common  polishing  earths  and  slates,  and  many 
species  of  apparently  dense  and  solid  rock,  are  the  work  of  the 
humble  organisms  of  which  I  speak,  often,  indeed,  of  animal- 
cnlse  so  small  as  to  become  visible  only  by  the  aid  of  lenses 
magnifying  a  hundred  times  the  linear  measures.  It  is  pop- 

dation  was  produced  in  the  Indalself,  which  rises  in  the  Storsjo  in  Jemtland, 
by  drawing  off  into  it  the  waters  of  another  lake  near  Ragunda.  The  flood 
destroyed  houses  and  fields  ;  much  earth  was  swept  into  the  channel,  and 
the  water  made  turbid  and  muddy ;  the  salmon  and  the  smaller  fish  for 
sook  the  river  altogether,  and  never  returned.  The  banks  of  the  river 
have  never  regained  their  former  solidity,  and  portions  of  their  soil  are 
still  continually  falling  into  the  water. — Kcsn  ge.nom  Srerge,  ii,  p.  51. 


124  MINUTE   ORGANISMS. 

ularlj  supposed  that  animalculse,  or  what  are  commonly  em 
braced  under  the  vague  name  of  infusoria,  inhabit  the  water 
alone,  bat  the  atmospheric  dust  transported  by  every  wind 
and  deposited  by  every  calm  is  full  of  microscopic  life  or  of  its 
relics.  The  soil  on  which  the  city  of  Berlin  stands,  contains 
at  the  depth  of  ten  or  fifteen  feet  below  the  surface,  living 
elaborators  of  silex  ;  *  and  a  -microscopic  examination  of  a 
handful  of  earth  connected  with  the  material  evidences  of 
guilt  has  enabled  the  naturalist  to  point  out  the  very  spot 
where  a  crime  was  committed.  It  has  been  computed  that 
one  sixth  part  of  the  solid  matter  let  fall  by  great  rivers  at 
their  outlets  consists  of  still  recognizable  infusory  shells  and 
shields,  and,  as  the  friction  of  rolling  water  must  reduce  much 
of  these  fragile  structures  to  a  state  of  comminution  which 
even  the  microscope  cannot  resolve  into  distinct  particles  and 
identity  as  relics  of  animal  or  of  vegetable  life,  we  must  con 
clude  that  a  considerably  larger  proportion  of  river  deposits  is 
really  the  product  of  animalcules. f 

It  is  evident  that  the  chemical,  and  in  many  cases  the 
mechanical  character  of  a  great  number  of  the  objects  impor 
tant  in  the  material  economy  of  human  life,  must  be  affected 
by  the  presence  of  so  large  an  organic  element  in  their  sub 
stance,  and  it  is  equally  obvious  that  all  agricultural  and  all 
industrial  operations  tend  to  disturb  the  natural  arrangements 
of  this  element,  to  increase  or  to  diminish  the  special  adaptation 
of  every  medium  in  which  it  lives  to  the  particular  orders  of 

*  WITTWER,  PliysiJialisclie  Geographic,  p.  142. 

t  To  vary  the  phrase,  I  make  occasional  use  of  animalcule,  which,  as  a 
popular  designation,  embraces  all  microscopic  organisms.  The  name  is 
founded  on  the  now  exploded  supposition  that  all  of  them  are  animated. 
which  was  the  general  belief  of  naturalists  when  attention  was  first  drawn 
to  them.  It  was  soon  discovered  that  many  of  them  were  unquestionably 
vegetable,  and  there  are  numerous  genera  the  true  classification  of  which 
is  matter  of  dispute  among  the  ablest  observers.  There  are  cases  in  which 
objects  formerly  taken  for  living  animalcules  turn  out  to  be  products  of  the 
decomposition  of  matter  once  animated,  and  it  is  admitted  that  neither 
spontaneous  motion  nor  even  apparent  irritability  are  sure  signs  of  animal 
life. 


POSSIBLE   CONTROL   OF   MINUTE   LIFE.  125 

being  inhabited  by  it.  Tlie  conversion  of  woodland  into  pas 
turage,  of  pasture  into  plough  land,  of  swamp  or  of  shallow 
sea  into  dry  ground,  the  rotations  of  cultivated  crops,  must 
prove  fatal  to  millions  of  living  things  upon  every  rood  of 
surface  thus  deranged  by  man,  and  must,  at  the  same  time, 
more  or  less  fully  compensate  this  destruction  of  life  by  pro 
moting  the  growth  and  multiplication  of  other  tribes  equally 
minute  in  dimensions. 

I  do  not  know  that  man  has  yet  endeavored  to  avail  him 
self,  by  artificial  contrivances,  of  the  agency  of  these  wonder 
ful  architects  and  manufacturers.  We  are  hardly  well  enough 
acquainted  with  their  natural  economy  to  devise  means  to  turn 
their  industry  to  profitable  account,  and  they  are  in  very 
many  cases  too  slow  in  producing  visible  results  for  an  age  so 
impatient  as  ours.  The  over-civilization  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  cannot  wait  for  wealth  to  be  amassed  by  infinitesimal 
gains,  and  we  are  in  haste  to  speculate  upon  the  powers  of 
nature,  as  we  do  upon  objects  of  bargain  and  sale  in  our  traf 
ficking  one  with  another.  But  there  are  still  some  cases  where 
the  little  we  know  of  a  life,  whose  workings  are  invisible  to 
the  naked  eye,  suggests  the  possibility  of  advantageously 
directing  the  efforts  of  troops  of  artisans  that  we  cannot  see. 
Upon  coasts  occupied  by  the  corallines,  the  reef-building  ani 
malcule  does  not  work  near  the  mouth  of  rivers.  Hence  the 
change  of  the  outlet  of  a  stream,  often  a  very  easy  matter,  may 
promote  the  construction  of  a  barrier  to  coast  navigation  at  one 
point,  and  check  the  formation  of  a  reef  at  another,  by  divert 
ing  a  current  of  fresh  water  from  the  former  and  pouring  it 
into  the  sea  at  the  latter.  Cases  may  probably  be  found  in 
tropical  seas,  where  rivers  have  prevented  the  working  of  the 
coral  animalcules  in  straits  separating  islands  from  each  other 
or  from  the  mainland.  The  diversion  of  such  streams  might 
remove  this  obstacle,  and  reefs  consequently  be  formed  which 
should  convert  an  archipelago  into  a  single  large  island,  and 
finally  join  that  to  the  neighboring  continent. 

Quatrefages  proposed  to  destroy  the  teredo  in  harbors  by 
impregnating  the  water  with  a  mineral  solution  fatal  to  them. 


126  POSSIBLE   CONTROL   OF   MINUTE   LIFE. 

Perhaps  the  labors  of  the  coralline  animals  might  be  arrested 
over  a  considerable  extent  of  sea  coast  by  similar  means.  The 
reef  builders  are  leisurely  architects,  but  the  precious  coral 
is  formed  so  rapidly  that  the  beds  may  be  relished  advan 
tageously  as  often  as  once  in  ten  years.*  It  does  not  seem 
impossible  that  this  coral  might  be  transplanted  to  the  Amer 
ican  coast,  where  the  Gulf  stream  would  furnish  a  suitable 
temperature  beyond  the  climatic  limits  that  otherwise  confine 
its  growth  ;  and  thus  a  new  source  of  profit  might  perhaps  be 
added  to  the  scanty  returns  of  the  hardy  fisherman. 

In  certain  geological  formations,  the  diatomacese  deposit,  at 
the  bottom  of  fresh-water  ponds,  beds  of  silicious  shields,  val 
uable  as  a  material  for  a  species  of  very  light  firebrick,  in  the 
manufacture  of  water  glass  and  of  hydraulic  cement,  and  ulti 
mately,  doubtless,  in  many  yet  undiscoverd  industrial  pro 
cesses.  An  attentive  study  of  the  conditions  favorable  to  the 
propagation  of  the  diatomacese  might  perhaps  help  us  to  profit 
directly  by  the  productivity  of  this  organism,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  disclose  secrets  of  nature  capable  of  being  turned  to 
valuable  account  in  dealing  with  silicious  rocks,  and  the  metal 
which  is  the  base  of  them.  Our  acquaintance  with  the  obscure 
and,  infinitesimal  life  of  which  I  have  now  been  treating  is 
very  recent,  and  still  very  imperfect.  We  know  that  it  is  of 
vast  importance  in  the  economy  of  nature,  but  we  are  so  ambi 
tious  to  grasp  the  great,  so  little  accustomed  to  occupy  our 
selves  with  the  minute,  that  we  are  not  yet  prepared  to  enter 
seriously  upon  the  question  how  far  we  can  control  and  direct 
the  operations,  not  of  un embodied  physical  forces,  but  of 
beings,  in  popular  apprehension,  almost  as  immaterial  as  they. 

Nature  has  no  unit  of  magnitude  by  which  she  measures 
her  works.  Man  takes  his  standards  of  dimension  from  him 
self.  The  hair's  breadth  was  his  minimum  until  the  micro 
scope  told  him  that  there  are  animated  creatures  to  which  one 

*  See  an  interesting  report  on  the  coral  fishery,  by  Sant'  Agabio,  Italian 
Consul-General  at  Algiers,  in  the  Bolleitino  Consolare,  published  by  the 
Department  of  Foreign  Afiairs,  18G2,  pp.  139,  151,  and  in  the  Annali  di 
Agricoltura,  Industria  e  Commcrcio,  No.  ii,  pp.  360,  873. 


NO   NATURAL    STANDARD   OF   MAGNITUDE.  127 

of  the  liairs  of  his  head  is  a  larger  cylinder  than  is  the  trunk 
of  the  giant  California  redwood  to  him.  He  borrows  his  inch 
from  the  breadth  of  his  thumb,  his  palm  and  span  from  the 
width  of  his  hand  and  the  spread  of  his  fingers,  his  foot  from 
the  length  of  the  organ  so  named;  his  cubit  is  the  distance 
from  the  tip  of  his  middle  finger  to  his  elbow,  and  his  fathom 
is  the  space  he  can  measure  with  his  outstretched  arms.  To  a 
being  who  instinctively  finds  the  standard  of  all  magnitudes 
in  his  own  material  frame,  all  objects  exceeding  his  own  di 
mensions  are  absolutely  great,  all  falling  short  of  them  abso 
lutely  small.  Hence  we  habitually  regard  the  whale  and  the 
elephant  as  essentially  large  and  therefore  important  crea 
tures,  the  animalcule  as  an  essentially  small  and  therefore 
unimportant  organism.  But  no  geological  formation  owes  its 
origin  to  the  labors  or  the  remains  of  the  huge  mammal,  while 
the  animalcule  composes,  or  has  furnished,  the  substance  of 
strata  thousands  of  feet  in  thickness,  and  extending,  in  un 
broken  beds,  over  many  degrees  of  terrestrial  surface.  If  man 
is  destined  to  inhabit  the  earth  much  longer,  and  to  advance 
in  natural  knowledge  with  the  rapidity  which  has  marked  his 
progress  in  physical  science  for  the  last  two  or  three  centuries, 
he  will  learn  to  put  a  wiser  estimate  on  the  works  of  creation, 
and  will  derive  not  only  great  instruction  from  studying  the 
ways  of  nature  in  her  obscurest,  humblest  walks,  but  great 
material  advantage  from  stimulating  her  productive  energies 
in  provinces  of  her  empire  hitherto  regarded  as  forever  inacces 
sible,  utterly  barren.* 

*  The  fermentation  of  liquids,  and  in  many  cases  the  decomposition  of 
semi-solids,  formerly  supposed  to  be  owing  purely  to  chemical  action,  are 
now  ascertained  to  be  due  to  vital  processes  of  living  minute  organisms 
both  vegetable  and  animal,  and  consequently  to  physiological,  as  well  as  to 
chemical  forces.  Even  alcohol  is  stated  to  be  an  animal  product.  See  an 
interesting  article  by  Auguste  Laugel  on  the  recent  researches  of  Pasteur, 
in  the  Revue  dcs  Deux  Mondes,  for  September  15th,  1863. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  WOODS. 

THE  HABITABLE  EARTH  ORIGINALLY  WOODED — THE  FOREST  DOES  NOT  FURNISH 
FOOD  FOR  MAN— FIRST  REMOVAL  OF  THE  WOODS — EFFECTS  OF  FIRE  ON  FOREST 
SOIL EFFECTS  OF  THE  DESTRUCTION  OF  THE  FOREST ELECTRICAL  INFLU 
ENCE  OF  TREES — CHEMICAL  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST. 

INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST,  CONSIDERED  AS  INORGANIC  MATTER,  ON  TEM 
PERATURE  :  a,  ABSORBING  AND  EMITTING  SURFACE  ;  6,  TREES  AS  CONDUCTORS 
OF  HEAT  ;  C,  TREES  IN  SUMMER  AND  IN  WINTER  ;  C/,  DEAD  PRODUCTS  OF 
TREES;  <?,  TREES  AS  A  SHELTER  TO  GROUNDS  TO  THE  LEEWARD  OF  THEM; 

/,  TREES  AS  A  PROTECTION  AGAINST  MALARIA THE  FOREST,  AS  INORGANIC 

MATTER,  TENDS  TO  MITIGATE  EXTREMES. 

TREES  AS  ORGANISMS  :  SPECIFIC  TEMPERATURE — TOTAL  INFLUENCE  OF 
THE  FOREST  ON  TEMPERATURE. 

INFLUENCE  OF  FORESTS  ON  THE  HUMIDITY  OF  THE  AIR  AND  THE  EARTH  : 

a,  AS  INORGANIC  MATTER  ;  6,  AS  ORGANIC WOOD  MOSSES  AND  FUNGI FLOW 

OF  SAP — ABSORPTION  AND  EXHALATION  OF  MOISTURE  BY  TREES — BALANCE  OF 
CONFLICTING  INFLUENCES — INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST  ON  TEMPERATURE  AND 

PRECIPITATION — INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST  ON  THE  HUMIDITY  OF  THE  SOIL 

ITS  INFLUENCE  ON  THE  FLOW  OF  SPRINGS — GENERAL  CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE 
DESTRUCTION  OF  THE  WOODS — LITERATURE  AND  CONDITION  OF  THE  FOREST 
IN  DIFFERENT  COUNTRIES — THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST  ON  INUNDATIONS 
— DESTRUCTIVE  ACTION  OF  TORRENTS — THE  PO  AND  ITS  DEPOSITS — MOUNTAIN 
SLIDKS — PROTECTION  AGAINST  THE  FALL  OF  ROCKS  AND  AVALANCHES  BY 
TREES — PRINCIPAL  CAUSES  OF  THE  DESTRUCTION  OF  THE  FOREST — AMERICAN 
FOREST  TREES— SPECIAL  CAUSES  OF  THE  DESTRUCTION  OF  EUROPEAN  WOODS 

ROYAL  FORESTS  AND  GAME  LAWS — SMALL  FOREST  PLANTS,  VITALITY  OF 

SEEDS — UTILITY  OF  THE  FOREST THE  FORESTS  OF  EUROPE — FORESTS  OF  THE 

UNITED  STATES  AND  CANADA THE  ECONOMY  OF  THE  FOREST — EUROPEAN  AND 

AMERICAN  TREES  COMPARED— SYLVICULTURE INSTABILITY  OF  AMERICAN 

LIFE. 

The  Habitable  Earth  Originally  Wooded. 

THERE  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  surface  of  the  hab 
itable  earth,  in  all  the  climates  and  regions  which  have  been 
the  abodes  of  dense  and  civilized  populations,  was,  with  few 


EARTH    ORIGINALLY    WOODED.  129 

exceptions,  already  covered  with  a  forest  growth  when  it  first 
became  the  home  of  man.  This  we  infer  from  the  extensive 
vegetable  remains — trunks,  branches,  roots,  fruifls,  seeds,  and 
leaves  of  trees — so  often  found  in  conjunction  with  works  of 
primitive  art,  in  the  boggy  soil  of  districts  where  no  forests 
appear  to  have  existed  within  the  eras  through  which  written 
annals  reach  ;  from  ancient  historical  records,  which  prove  that 
large  provinces,  where  the  earth  has  long  been  wholly  bare  of 
trees,  were  clothed  with  vast  and  almost  unbroken  woods 
when  first  made  known  to  Greek  and  Roman  civilization ;  * 
ai.d  from  the  state  of  much  of  North  and  of  South  America 
when  they  were  discovered  and  colonized  by  the  European 
race.f 

These  evidences  are  strengthened  by  observation  of  the 
natural  economy  of  our  own  time ;  for,  whenever  a  tract  of 
country,  once  inhabited  and  cultivated  by  man,  is  abandoned 
by  him  and  by  domestic  animals,;}:  and  surrendered  to  the 

*  The  recorded  evidence  in  support  of  the  proposition  in  the  text  has 
been  collected  by  L.  F.  Alfred  Maury,  in  his  Histoire  des  grandes  Forets  de 
la  Gaule  et  de  Vancienne  France,  and  by  Becquerel,  in  his  important  work, 
Des  climats  et  de  ^Influence  qifexercent  les  Sols  Noises  et  non  Noises,  livre  ii, 
chap,  i  to  iv. 

We  may  rank  among  historical  evidences  on  this  point,  if  not  tech 
nically  among  historical  records,  old  geographical  names  and  terminations 
etymologically  indicating  forest  or  grove,  which  are  so  common  in  many 
parts  of  the  Eastern  Continent  now  entirely  stripped  of  woods — such  as, 
in  Southern  Europe,  Brcuil,  Broglio,  Brolio,  Brolo ;  in  Northern,  Briihl, 
-wald,  -wold,  -wood,  -sha\v,  -skcg,  and  -skov. 

I  The  island  of  Madeira,  whose  noble  forests  were  devastated  by  fire 
not  long  after  its  colonization  by  European  settlers,  derives  its  name  from 
the  Portuguese  word  for  wood. 

t  Browsing  animals,  and  most  of  all  the  goat,  are  considered  by  foresters 
as  more  injurious  to  the  growth  of  young  trees,  and,  therefore,  to  the  repro 
duction  of  the  forest,  than  almost  any  other  destructive  cause.  "Accord 
ing  to  Beatson's  Saint  Helena,  introductory  chapter,  and  Darwin's  Journal 
of  Researches  in  Geology  and  Natural  History,  pp.  582,  583,"  says  Emsmann, 
in  the  notes  to  his  translation  of  Foissac,  p.  054,  "  it  was  the  goats  which 
destroyed  the  beautiful  forests  that,  three  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago, 
covered  a  continuous  surface  of  not  less  than  two  thousand  acres  in  the 
9 


130  EARTH    ORIGINALLY    WOODED. 

undisturbed  influences  of  spontaneous  nature,  its  soil  sooner  or 
later  clothes  itself  with  herbaceous  and  arborescent  plants,  and 
at  no  long  interval,  with  a  dense  forest  growth.  Indeed,  upon 
surfaces  of  a  certain  stability,  and  not  absolutely  precipitous 
inclination,  the  special  conditions  required  for  the  spontaneous 


interior  of  the  island  [of  St.  Helena],  not  to  mention  scattered  groups  of 
trees.  Darwin  observes:  'During  our  stay  at  Valparaiso,  I  was  most 
positively  assured  that  sandal  wood  formerly  grew  in  abundance  on  the 
island  of  Juan  Fernandez,  but  that  this  tree  had  now  become  entirely 
extinct  there,  having  been  extirpated  by  the  goats  which  early  navigators 
had  introduced.  The  neighboring  islands,  to  which  goats  have  not  been 
carried,  still  abound  in  sandal  wood.'  " 

In  the  winter,  the  deer  tribe,  especially  the  great  American  moose 
deer,  subsists  much  on  the  buds  and  young  sprouts  of  trees  ;  yet — though 
from  the  destruction  of  the  wolves  or  from  some  not  easily  explained 
cause,  these  latter  animals  have  recently  multiplied  so  rapidly  in  some 
parts  of  Isorth  America,  that,  not  long  since,  four  hundred  of  them  are 
said  to  have  been  killed,  in  one  season,  on  a  territory  in  Maine  not  com 
prising  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  square  miles — the  wild  browsing 
quadrupeds  are  rarely,  if  ever,  numerous  enough  in  regions  uninhabited 
by  man  to  produce  any  sensible  eifect  on  the  condition  of  the  forest.  A 
reason  why  they  are  less  injurious  than  the  goat  to  young  trees  may  be 
that  they  resort  to  this  nutriment  only  in  the  winter,  when  the  grasses  and 
shrubs  are  leafless  or  covered  with  snow,  whereas  the  goat  feeds  upon  buds 
and  young  shoots  principally  in  the  season  of  growth.  However  this  may 
be,  the  natural  law  of  consumption  and  supply  keeps  the  forest  growth, 
and  the  wild  animals  which  live  on  its  products,  in  such  a  state  of  equilib 
rium  as  to  insure  the  indefinite  continuance  of  both,  and  the  perpetuity 
of  neither  is  endangered  until  man,  who  is  above  natural  law,  interferes 
and  destroys  the  balance. 

When,  however,  deer  are  bred  and  protected  in  parks,  they  multiply 
like  domestic  cattle,  and  become  equally  injurious  to  trees.  "A  few  years 
ago,"  says  Clave,  "  there  were  not  less  than  two  thousand  deer  of  different 
ages  in  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau.  For  want  of  grass,  they  are  driven  to 
the  trees,  and  they  do  not  spare  them.  *  *  It  is  calculated  that  the 
browsing  of  these  animals,  and  the  consequent  retardation  of  the  growth 
of  the  wood,  diminishes  the  annual  product  of  the  forest  to  the  amount 
of  two  hundred  thousand  cubic  feet  per  year,  *  *  and  besides  this,  the 
trees  thus  mutilated  are  soon  exhausted  and  die.  The  deer  attack  the 
pines,  too,  tearing  off  the  bark  in  long  strips,  or  rubbing  their  heads 
against  them  when  shedding  their  horns ;  and  sometimes,  in  groves  of 


VEGETATION  IN  VOLCANIC  MATTEK.  131 

propagation  of  trees  may  all  be  negatively  expressed  and 
reduced  to  these  three  :  exemption  from  defect  or  excess  of 
moisture,  from  perpetual  frost,  and  from  the  depredations  of 
man  and  browsing  quadrupeds.  Where  these  requisites  are 
secured,  the  hardest  rock  is  as  certain  to  be  overgrown  with 
wood  as  the  most  fertile  plain,  though,  for  obvious  reasons,  the 
process  is  slower  in  the  former  than  in  the  latter  case.  Lichens 
and  mosses  first  prepare  the  way  for  a  more  highly  organized 
vegetation.  They  retain  the  moisture  of  rains  and  dews,  and 
bung  it  to  act,  in  combination  with  the  gases  evolved  by  their 
organic  processes,  in  decomposing  the  surface  of  the  rocks  they 
cover ;  they  arrest  and  confine  the  dust  which  the  wind  scat 
ters  over  them,  and  their  final  decay  adds  new  material  to  the 
soil  already  half  formed  beneath  and  upon  them.  A  very  thin 
stratum  of  mould  is  sufficient  for  the  germination  of  seeds  of 
the  hardy  evergreens  and  birches,  the  roots  of  which  are  often 
found  in  immediate  contact  with  the  rock,  supplying  their 
trees  with  nourishment  from  a  soil  derived  from  the  decompo 
sition  of  their  own  foliage,  or  sending  out  long  rootlets  into 
the  surrounding  earth  in  search  of  juices  to  feed  them. 

The  eruptive  matter  of  volcanoes,  forbidding  as  is  its  as 
pect,  does  not  refuse  nutriment  to  the  woods.  The  refractory 
lava  of  Etna,  it  is  true,  remains  long  barren,  and  that  of  the 
great  eruption  of  1669  is  still  almost  wholly  devoid  of  vegeta 
tion.*  But  the  cactus  is  making  inroads  even  here,  while  the 
volcanic  sand  and  molten  rock  thrown  out  by  Vesuvius  soon 

more  than  a  hundred  hectares,  not  one  pine  is  found  uninjured  by  them." — 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  Mai,  1863,  p.  157.  See  also  Appendix,  ~N"o.  21. 

Beckstein  computes  that  a  park  of  2,500  acres,  containing  250  acres  of 
marsh,  250  of  fields  and  meadows,  and  the  remaining  2,000  of  wood,  may 
keep  364  deer  of  different  species,  47  wild  boars,  200  hares,  100  rabbits, 
and  an  indefinite  number  of  pheasants.  These  animals  would  require,  in 
winter,  123,000  pounds  of  hay,  and  22,000  pounds  of  potatoes,  besides 
what  they  would  pick  up  themselves.  The  natural  forest  most  thickly 
peopled  with  wild  animals  would  not,  in  temperate  climates,  contain,  upon 
the  average,  one  tenth  of  these  numbers  to  the  same  extent  of  surface. 

*  Even  the  volcanic  dust  of  Etna  remains  very  long  unproductive. 
Near  Nicolosi  is  a  great  extent  of  coarse  black  sand,  thrown  out  in  1669, 


132  VEGETATION   IN   DESEKTS. 

becomes  product! ve.  George  Sandys,  who  visited  tins  latter 
mountain  in  1611,  after  it  had  reposed  for  several  centuries, 
found  the  throat  of  the  volcano  at  the  bottom  of  the  crater 
"  almost  choked  with  broken  rocks  and  trees  that  are  falne 
therein."  "  !Next  to  this,"  he  continues,  "  the  matter  thrown 
up  is  ruddy,  light,  and  soft :  more  removed,  blacke  and  pon 
derous  :  the  uttermost  brow,  that  declineth  like  the  seates  in  a 
theater,  nourishing  with  trees  and  excellent  pasturage.  The 
midst  of  the  hill  is  shaded  with  chestnut  trees,  and  others 
bearing  sundry  fruits."* 

I  am  convinced  that  forests  would  soon  cover  many  parts 
of  the  Arabian  and  African  deserts,  if  man  and  domestic  ani 
mals,  especially  the  goat  and  the  camel,  were  banished  from 
them.  The  hard  palate  and  tongue  and  strong  teeth  and  jaws 
of  this  latter  quadruped  enable  him  to  break  off  and  masticate 
tough  and  thorny  branches  as  large  as  the  finger.  He  is  par 
ticularly  fond  of  the  smaller  twigs,  leaves,  and  seedpods  of 
the  sont  and  other  acacias,  which,  like  the  American  Robinia, 

which,  for  almost  two  centuries,  lay  entirely  bare,  and  can  be  made  to 
grow  plants  only  by  artificial  mixtures  and  much  labor. 

The  increase  in  the  price  of  wines,  in  consequence  of  the  diminution  of 
the  product  from  the  grape  disease,  however,  has  brought  even  these  ashes 
under  cultivation.  "I  found,"  says  Waltershausen,  referring  to  the  years 
1861-'62,  "  plains  of  volcanic  sand  and  half-subdued  lava  streams,  which 
twenty  years  ago  lay  utterly  waste,  now  covered  with  fine  vineyards.  The 
ashfield  of  ten  square  miles  above  Nicolosi,  created  by  the  eruption  of  1669, 
which  was  entirely  barren  in  1835,  is  now  planted  with  vines  almost  to 
the  summits  of  Monte  Rosso,  at  a  height  of  three  thousand  feet.'' — Ueber 
den  Sicilianischen  Ackerbau,  p.  19. 

*  A  Relation  of  a  Journey  Begun  An.  Dom.  1610,  lib.  4,  p.  260,  edition 
of  1627.  The  testimony  of  Sandys  on  this  point  is  confirmed  by  that  of 
Pigliio,  Braccini,  Magliocco,  Salimbeni,  and  Nicola  di  Rubeo,  all  cited  by 
Roth,  Der  Vesuv.,  p.  9.  There  is  some  uncertainty  about  the  date  of  the 
last  eruption  previous  to  the  great  one  of  1631.  Ashes,  though  not  lava, 
appear  to  have  been  thrown  out  about  the  year  1500,  and  some  chroniclers 
have  recorded  an  eruption  in  the  year  1306  ;  but  this  seems  to  be  an  error 
for  1036,  when  a  great  quantity  of  lava  was  ejected.  In  1139,  ashes  were 
thrown  out  for  many  days.  I  take  these  dates  from  the  work  of  Roth 
just  cited. 


FOKEST   FUKNISHES    NO    FOOD   FOB    MAN.  133 

thrive  well  on  dry  and  sandy  soils,  and  lie  spares  no  tree  the 
branches  of  which  are  within  his  reach,  except,  if  I  remember 
right,  the  tamarisk  that  produces  manna.  Young  trees  sprout 
plentifully  around  the  springs  and  along  the  winter  water 
courses  of  the  desert,  and  these  are  just  the  halting  stations  of 
the  caravans  and  their  routes  of  travel.  In  the  shade  of  these 
trees,  annual  grasses  and  perennial  shrubs  shoot  up,  but  are 
mown  down  by  the  hungry  cattle  of  the  Bedouin,  as  fast  as 
they  grow.  A  few  years  of  undisturbed  vegetation  would 
sufnce  to  cover  such  points  with  groves,  and  these  would  grad 
ually  extend  themselves  over  soils  where  now  scarcely  any 
green  thing  but  the  bitter  colocynth  and  the  poisonous  fox 
glove  is  ever  seen. 

The  Forest  does  not  Furnish  Food  for  Man. 

In  a  region  absolutely  covered  with  trees,  human  life  could 
not  long  be  sustained,  for  want  of  animal  and  vegetable  food. 
The  depths  of  the  forest  seldom  furnish  either  bulb  or  fruit 
suited  to  the  nourishment  of  man  ;  and  the  fowls  and  beasts 
on  which  he  feeds  are  scarcely  seen  except  upon  the  margin 
of  the  wood,  for  here  only  grow  the  shrubs  and  grasses,  and 
here  only  are  found  the  seeds  and  insects,  which  form  the  sus 
tenance  of  the  non-carnivorous  birds  and  quadrupeds.* 

*  Except  upon  the  banks  of  rivers  or  of  lakes,  the  woods  of  the  interior 
of  Xorth  America,  far  from  the  habitations  of  man,  are  almost  destitute  of 
animal  life-.  Dr.  Xewberry,  describing  the  vast  forests  of  the  yellow  pine 
of  the  West,  Finns  ponderosa,  remarks:  "In  the  arid  and  desert  regions 
of  the  interior  basin,  we  made  whole  days'  marches  in  forests  of  yellow 
pine,  of  which  neither  the  monotony  was  broken  by  other  forms  of  vege 
tation,  nor  its  stillness  by  the  flutter  of  a  bird  or  the  hum  of  an  insect." — 
Pacific  Railroad  Report,  vol.  vi,  1857.  Dr.  XEWBEBBY'S  Report  on  Botany, 
p.  37. 

The  wild  fruit  and  nut  trees,  the  Canada  plum,  the  cherries,  the  many 
species  of  walnut,  the  butternut,  the  hazel,  yield  very  little,  frequently 
nothing,  so  long  as  they  grow  in  the  woods  ;  and  it  is  only  when  the  trees 
around  them  are  cut  down,  or  when  they  grow  in  pastures,  that  they  be 
come  productive.  The  berries,  too — the  strawberry,  the  blackberry,  the 


134  REMOVAL    OF   THE   FOREST. 

First  Removal  of  the  Forest. 

As  soon  as  multiplying  man  had  filled  the  open  grounds 
alon^  the  margin  of  the  rivers,  the  lakes,  and  the  sea,  and  suffi 
ciently  peopled  the  natural  meadows  and  savannas  of  the 
interior,  where  such  existed,*  he  could  find  room  for  expansion 

raspberry,  the  whortleberry,  scarcely  bear  fruit  at  all  except  in  cleared 
ground. 

The  North  American  Indians  did  not  inhabit  the  interior  of  the  forests. 
Their  settlements  were  upon  the  shores  of  rivers  and  lakes,  and  their 
weapons  and  other  relics  are  found  only  in  the  narrow  open  grounds 
which  they  had  burned  over  and  cultivated,  or  in  the  margin  of  the  woods 
around  their  villages. 

The  rank  forests  of  the  tropics  are  as  unproductive  of  human  aliment  as 
the  less  luxuriant  woods  of  the  temperate  zone.  In  Strain's  unfortunate 
expedition  across  the  great  American  isthmus,  where  the  journey  lay 
principally  through  thick  woods,  several  of  the  party  died  of  starvation, 
and  for  many  days  the  survivors  were  forced  to  subsist  on  the  scantiest 
supplies  of  uunutritious  vegetables  perhaps  never  before  employed  for 
food  by  man.  See  the  interesting  account  of  that  expedition  in  Harper's 
Magazine  for  March,  April,  and  May,  1855. 

Clave,  as  well  as  many  earlier  writers,  supposes  that  primitive  man  de 
rived  his  nutriment  from  the  spontaneous  productions  of  the  wood.  "  It 
is  to  the  forests,"  says  he,  "  that  man  was  first  indebted  for  the  means  of 
subsistence.  Exposed  alone,  without  defence,  to  the  rigor  of  the  seasons, 
as  well  as  to  the  attacks  of  animals  stronger  and  swifter  than  himself,  he 
found  in  them  his  first  shelter,  drew  from  them  his  first  weapons.  In 
the  first  period  of  humanity,  they  provided  for  all  his  wants :  they  fur 
nished  him  wood  for  warmth,  fruits  for  food,  garments  to  cover  his  naked 
ness,  arms  for  his  defence." — Etudes  sur  VEconomie  Forestiere,  p.  13. 

But  the  history  of  savage  life,  as  far  as  it  is  known  to  us,  presents  man 
in  that  condition  as  inhabiting  only  the  borders  of  the  forest  and  the  open 
grounds  that  skirt  the  waters  and  the  woods,  and  as  finding  only  there  the 
aliments  which  make  up  his  daily  bread. 

*  The  origin  of  the  great  natural  meadows,  or  prairies  as  they  are 
called,  of  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  is  obscure.  There  is,  of  course,  no 
historical  evidence  on  the  subject,  and  I  believe  that  remains  of  forest 
vegetation  are  seldom  or  never  found  beneath  the  surface,  even  in  the 
sloughs,  where  the  perpetual  moisture  would  preserve  such  remains  indefi 
nitely.  The  want  of  trees  upon  them  has  been  ascribed  to  the  occasional 
long-continued  droughts  of  summer,  and  the  excessive  humidity  of  the  soil 


REMOVAL   OF   THE   FOREST.  135 

and  further  growth,  only  by  the  removal  of  a  portion  of  the 
forest  that  hemmed  him  in.  The  destruction  of  the  woods, 
then,  was  man's  first  geographical  conquest,  his  first  violation  of 
the  harmonies  of  inanimate  nature. 

Primitive  man  had  little  occasion  to  fell  trees  for  fuel,  or, 


in  winter ;  but  it  is,  in  very  many  instances,  certain  that,  by  whatever 
mea'iis  the  growth  of  forests  upon  them  was  first  prevented  or  destroyed, 
the  trees  have  been  since  kept  out  of  them  only  by  the  annual  burning  of 
the  grass,  by  grazing  animals,  or  by  cultivation.  The  groves  and  belts  of 
trees  which  are  found  upon  the  prairies,  though  their  seedlings  are  occa 
sionally  killed  by  drought,  or  by  excess  of  moisture,  extend  themselves 
rapidly  over  them  when  the  seeds  and  shoots  are  protected  against  fire, 
cattle,  and  the  plough.  The  prairies,  though  of  vast  extent,  must  be  con 
sidered  as  a  local,  and,  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  extends,  abnormal 
exception  to  the  law  which  clothes  all  suitable  surfaces  with  forest ;  for 
there  are  many  parts  of  the  United  States — Ohio,  for  example — where  the 
physical  conditions  appear  to  be  nearly  identical  with  those  of  the  States 
lying  farther  west,  but  where  there  were  comparatively  few  natural 
meadows,  The  prairies  were  the  proper  feeding  grounds  of  the  bison, 
and  the  vast  number  of  those  animals  is  connected,  as  cause  or  conse 
quence,  with  the  existence  of  these  vast  pastures.  The  bison,  indeed, 
could  not  convert  the  forest  into  a  pasture,  but  he  would  do  much  to  pre 
vent  the  pasture  from  becoming  a  forest. 

There  is  positive  evidence  that  some  of  the  American  tribes  possessed 
large  herds  of  domesticated  bisons.  See  HUMBOLDT,  AnsicJiten  der  Natur, 
i,  pp.  71-73.  What  authorizes  us  to  affirm  that  this  was  simply  the  wild 
bison  reclaimed,  and  why  may  we  not,  with  equal  probability,  be'lieve  that 
the  migratory  prairie  buffalo  is  the  progeny  of  the  domestic  animal  run  wild? 

There  are,  both  on  the  prairies,  as  in  Wisconsin,  and  in  deep  forests,  as 
in  Ohio,  extensive  remains  of  a  primitive  people,  who  must  have  be<^| 
more  numerous  and  more  advanced  in  art  than  the  present  Indian  tribes.' 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  woods  where  such  earthworks  are  found 
in  Ohio  were  cleared  by  them,  and  that  the  vicinity  of  these  fortresses  or 
"temples  was  inhabited  by  a  large  population.  Nothing  forbids  the  suppo 
sition  that  the  prairies  were  cleared  by  the  same  or  a  similar  people,  and 
that  the  growth  of  trees  upon  them  has  been  prevented  by  fires  and 
grazing,  while  the  restoration  of  the  woods  in  Ohio  may  be  due  to  the 
abandonment  of  that  region  by  its  original  inhabitants.  The  climatic  con 
ditions  unfavorable  to  the  spontaneous  growth  of  trees  on  the  prairies  may 
be  an  effect  of  too  extensive  clearings,  rather  than  a  cause  of  the  want  of 
woods.  See  Appendix,  No.  22. 


136  BURNING   OF   FORESTS. 

for  the  construction  of  dwellings,  boats,  and  the  implements 
of  his  rude  agriculture  and  handicrafts.  Windfalls  would 
furnish  a  thin  population  with  a  sufficient  supply  of  such 
material,  and  if  occasionally  a  growing  tree  was  cut,  the  injury 
to  the  forest  would  be  too  insignificant  to  be  at  all  appreciable. 
The  accidental  escape  and  spread  of  fire,  or,  possibly,  the 
combustion  of  forests  by  lightning,  must  have  first  suggested 
the  advantages  to  be  derived  from  the  removal  of  too  abun 
dant  and  extensive  woods,  and,  at  the  same  time,  have  pointed 
out  a  means  by  which  a  large  tract  of  surface  could  readily  be 
cleared  of  much  of  this  natural  incumbrance.  As  soon  as  agri 
culture  had  commenced  at  all,  it  would  be  observed  that  the 
growth  of  cultivated  plants,  as  well  as  of  many  species  of  wild 
vegetation,  was  particularly  rapid  and  luxuriant  on  soils  which 
had  been  burned  over,  and  thus  a  new  stimulus  would  be 
given  to  the  practice  of  destroying  the  woods  by  fire,  as  a 
means  of  both  extending  the  open  grounds,  and  making  the 
acquisition  of  a  yet  more  productive  soil.  After  a  few  har 
vests  had  exhausted  the  first  rank  fertility  of  the  virgin  mould, 
or  when  weeds  and  briers  and  the  sprouting  roots  of  the  trees 
had  begun  to  choke  the  crops  of  the  half-subdued  soil,  the 
ground  would  be  abandoned  for  new  fields  won  from  the 
forest  by  the  same  means,  and  the  deserted  plain  or  hillock 
would  soon  clothe  itself  anew  with  shrubs  and  trees,  to  be 
again  subjected  to  the  same  destructive  process,  and  again  sur 
rendered  to  the  restorative  powers  of  vegetable  nature.*  This 

-  *  In  many  parts  of  the  North  American  States,  the  first  white  settlers 
found  extensive  tracts  of  thin  woods,  of  a  very  park-like  character,  called 
"  oak  openings,"  from  the  predominance  of  different  species  of  that  tree 
upon  them.  These  were  the  semi-artificial  pasture  grounds  of  the  Indians, 
brought  into  that  state,  and  so  kept,  by  partial  clearing,  and  by  the  annual 
burning  of  the  grass.  The  object  of  tins  operation  wras  to  attract  the  deer 
to  the  fresh  herbage  which  sprang  up  after  the  fire.  The  oaks  bore  the 
annual  scorching,  at  least  for  a  certain  time  ;  but  if  it  had  been  indefinitely 
continued,  they  would  very  probably  have  been  destroyed  at  last.  The 
soil  would  have  then  been  much  in  the  prairie  condition,  and  would  have 
needed  nothing  but  grazing  for  a  long  succession  of  years  to  make  the  re 
semblance  perfect.  That  the  annual  fires  alone  occasioned  the  peculiar 


EFFECTS    OF   BURNING   FOKEST.  137 

rude  economy  would  be  continued  for  generations,  and  wasteful 
as  it  is,  is  still  largely  pursued  in  Northern  Sweden,  Swedish 
Lap] and,  and  sometimes  even  in  France  and  the  United  States.* 

character  of  the  oak  openings,  is  proved  by  the  fact,  that  as  soon  as  the 
Indians  had  left  the  country,  young  trees  of  many  species  sprang  up  and 
grow  luxuriantly  upon  them.  See  a  very  interesting  account  of  the  oak 
openings  in  D WIGHT'S  Travels,  iv,  pp.  58-G3. 

*  The  practice  of  burning  over  woodland,  at  once  to  clear  and  manure 
the  ground,  is  called  in  Swedish  wedjande,  a  participial  noun  from  the  verb 
att  svctlja,  to  burn  over.  Though  used  in  Sweden  as  a  preparation  for 
crops  of  rye  or  other  grain,  it  is  employed  in  Lapland  more  frequently  to 
secure  an  abundant  growth  of  pasturage,  which  follows  in  two  or  three 
years  after  the  fire ;  and  it  is  sometimes  resorted  to  as  a  mode  of  driving 
the  Laplanders  and  their  reindeer  from  the  vicinity  of  the  Swedish  back 
woodsman's  grass  grounds  and  haystacks,  to  which  they  are  dangerous 
neighbors.  The  forest,  indeed,  rapidly  recovers  itself,  but  it  is  a  genera 
tion  or  more  before  the  reindeer  moss  grows  again.  When  the  forest  con 
sists  of  pine,  tall,  the  ground,  instead  of  being  rendered  fertile  by  this 
process,  becomes  hopelessly  barren,  and  for  a  long  titne  afterward  pro 
duces  nothing  but  weeds  and  briers. — L^STADIUS,  Om  Uppodlingar  i  Lapp- 
marken,  p.  15.  See  also  SCHUBERT,  Eesa  i  Sxerge,  ii,  p.  375. 

In  some  parts  of  France  this  practice  is  so  general  that  Clave  says  :  "  In 
the  department  of  Ardennes  it  (le  sartage)  is  the  basis  of  agriculture.  The 
northern  part  of  the  department,  comprising  the  arrondissemcnts  of  Eocroi 
and  Mezitres,  is  covered  by  steep  wooded  mountains  with  an  argillaceous, 
compact,  moist  and  cold  soil ;  it  is  furrowed  by  three  valleys,  or  rather 
three  deep  ravines,  at  the  bottom  of  which  roll  the  waters  of  the  Meuse, 
the  Semoy,  and  the  Sormonne,  and  villages  show  themselves  wherever  the 
walls  of  the  valleys  retreat  sufficiently  from  the  rivers  to  give  room  to 
establish  them.  Deprived  of  arable  soil,  since  the  nature  of  the  ground 
permits  neither  regular  clearing  nor  cultivation,  the  peasant  of  the  Ar 
dennes,  by  means  of  burning,  obtains  from  the  forest  a  subsistence  which, 
without  this  resource,  would  fail  him.  After  the  removal  of  the  disposable 
wood,  he  spreads  over  the  soil  the  branches,  twigs,  briars,  and  heath,  seta 
fire  to  them  in  the  dry  weather  of  July  and  August,  and  sows  in  Septem 
ber  a  crop  of  rye,  which  he  covers  by  a  light  ploughing.  Thus  prepared, 
the  ground  yields  from  seventeen  to  twenty  bushels  an  acre,  besides  a  ton 
and  a  half  or  two  tons  of  straw  of  the  best  quality  for  the  manufacture  of 
straw  hats." — CLAVE,  Etudes  sur  V Economic  Foresti&re,  p.  21. 

Clave  does  not  expressly  condemn  the  sartage,  which  indeed  seems  the 
only  practicable  method  of  obtaining  crops  from  the  soil  he  describes,  but, 
as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  it  is  regarded  by  most  writers  as  a  highly  per- 
uicious  practice. 


138  EFFECTS   OF   BURNING   FOREST. 

Effects  of  Fire  on  Forest  Soil. 

Aside  from  the  mechanical  and  chemical  effects  of  the  dis 
turbance  of  the  soil  by  agricultural  operations,  and  of  the  freer 
admission  of  sun,  rain,  and  air  to  the  ground,  the  fire  of  itself 
exerts  an  important  influence  on  its  texture  and  condition.  It 
consumes  a  portion  of  the  half-decayed  vegetable  mould  which 
served  to  hold  its  mineral  particles  together  and  to  retain  the 
water  of  precipitation,  and  thus  loosens,  pulverizes,  and  dries 
the  earth ;  it  destroys  reptiles,  insects,  and  worms,  with  their 
eggs,  and  the  seeds  of  trees  and  of  smaller  plants  ;  it  supplies, 
in  the  ashes  which  it  deposits  on  the  surface,  important  ele 
ments  for  the  growth  of  a  new  forest  clothing,  as  well  as  of  the 
usual  objects  of  agricultural  industry ;  and  by  the  changes  thus 
produced,  it  fits  the  ground  for  the  reception  of  a  vegetation 
different  in  character  from  that  which  had  spontaneously  cov 
ered  it.  These  new  conditions  help  to  explain  the  natural 
succession  of  forest  crops,  so  generally  observed  in  all  woods 
cleared  by  fire  and  then  abandoned.  There  is  no  doubt,  how 
ever,  that  other  influences  contribute  to  the  same  result, 
because  effects  more  or  less  analogous  follow  when  the  trees 
are  destroyed  by  other  causes,  as  by  high  winds,  by  the  wood 
man's  axe,  and  even  by  natural  decay.* 

*  The  remarkable  mounds  and  other  earthworks  constructed  in  the  valley 
of  the  Ohio  and  elsewhere  in  the  territory  of  the  United  States,  by  a  people 
apparently  more  advanced  in  culture  than  the  modern  Indian,  were  over 
grown  with  a  dense  clothing  of  forest  when  first  discovered  by  the  whites. 
But  though  the  ground  where  they  were  erected  must  have  been  occupied 
by  a  large  population  for  a  considerable  length  of  time,  and  therefore  en 
tirely  cleared,  the  trees  which  grew  upon  the  ancient  fortresses  and  the 
adjacent  lands  were  not  distinguishable  in  species,  or  even  in  dimensions  and 
character  of  growth,  from  the  neighboring  forests,  where  the  soil  seemed 
never  to  have  been  disturbed.  This  apparent  exception  to  the  law  of  change 
of  crop  in  natural  forest  growth  was  ingeniously  explained  by  General  Har 
rison's  suggestion,  that  the  lapse  of  time  since  the  era  of  the  mound 
builders  was  so  great  as  to  have  embraced  several  successive  generations  of 
trees,  and  occasioned,  by  their  rotation,  a  return  to  the  original  vegetation. 

The  successive  changes  in  the  spontaneous  growth  of  the  forest,  as 


METEOROLOGICAL  IMPORTANCE  OF  FOREST.        139 

Effects  of  Destruction  of  the  Forest. 

The  physico-geographical  effects  of  the  destruction  of  the 
forests  may  be  divided  into  two  great  classes,  each  having  an 
important  influence  on  vegetable  and  on  animal  life  in  all  their 
manifestations,  as  well  as  on  every  branch  of  rural  economy 
and  productive  industry,  and,  therefore,  on  all  the  material 
interests  of  man.  The  first  respects  the  meteorology  of  the 
countries  exposed  to  the  action  of  these  influences  ;  the  second, 
their  superficial  geography,  or,  in  other  words,  configuration, 
consistence,  and  clothing  of  surface. 

For  reasons  assigned  in  the  first  chapter,  the  meteorological 
or  climatic  branch  of  the  subject  is  the  most  obscure,  and  the 
conclusions  of  physicists  respecting  it  are,  in  a  great  degree, 
inferential  only,  not  founded  on  experiment  or  direct  observa 
tion.  They  are,  as  might  be  expected,  somewhat  discordant, 
though  certain  general  results  are  almost  universally  accepted, 
and  seem  indeed  too  well  supported  to  admit  of  serious  question. 

proved  by  the  character  of  the  wood  found  in  bogs,  is  not  ^infrequently 
such  as  to  suggest  the  theory  of  a  considerable  change  of  climate  during 
the  human  period.  But  the  laws  which  govern  the  germination  and 
growth  of  forest  trees  must  be  further  studied,  and  the  primitive  local 
conditions  of  the  sites  where  ancient  woods  lie  buried  must  be  better 
ascertained,  before  this  theory  can  be  admitted  upon  the  evidence  in  ques 
tion.  In  fact,  the  order  of  succession — for  a  rotation  or  alternation  is  not 
yet  proved — may  move  in  opposite  directions  in  different  countries  with 
the  same  climate  and  at  the  same  time.  Thus  in  Denmark  and  in  Holland 
the  spike-leaved  firs  have  given  place  to  the  broad-leaved  beech,  while  in 
Northern  Germany  the  process  has  been  reversed,  and  evergreens  have 
supplanted  the  oaks  and  birches  of  deciduous  foliage.  The  principal  de 
termining  cause  seems  to  be  the  influence  of  light  upon  the  germination  of 
the  seeds  and  the  growth  of  the  young  tree.  In  a  forest  of  firs,  for  in 
stance,  the  distribution  of  the  light  and  shade,  to  the  influence  of  which 
seeds  and  shoots  are  exposed,  is  by  no  means  the  same  as  in  a  wood  of 
beeches  or  of  oaks,  and  hence  the  growth  of  different  species  will  be 
stimulated  in  the  two  forests.  See  BERG,  Das  Verdrdngen  der  Laubicalder 
im  NordlicJien  DeutscJtland,  1844.  HEYER,  Das  VerTialten  der  Waldbdume 
gegen  LicJit  und  ScJiatten,  1852.  STARING,  De  Bodem  tan  Nederland,  1856, 
i,  pp.  120-200.  VALTPELL,  Om  Bogens  Indiandring  i  de  Danslce 
1857.  KNORP,  Studien  uber  die  BucJien  -  WirtJiscJiaft.  1863. 


140  ELECTRICAL  INFLUENCE  OF  FOREST. 

Electrical  Influence  of  Trees. 

The  properties  of  trees,  singly  and  in  groups,  as  exciters  or 
conductors  of  electricity,  and  their  consequent  influence  upon 
the  electrical  state  of  the  atmosphere,  do  not  appear  to  have 
been  much  investigated ;  and  the  conditions  of  the  forest  itself 
are  so  variable  and  so  complicated,  that  the  solution  of  any 
general  problem  respecting  its  electrical  influence  would  be  a 
matter  of  extreme  difficulty.  It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  sup 
pose  that  a  dense  cloud,  a  sea  of  vapor,  can  pass  over  miles  of 
surface  bristling  with  good  conductors,  without  undergoing 
some  change  of  electrical  condition.  Hypothetical  cases  may 
be  put  in  which  the  character  of  the  change  could  be  deduced 
from  the  known  laws  of  electrical  action.  But  in  actual 
nature,  the  elements  are  too  numerous  for  us  to  seize.  The 
true  electrical  condition  of  neither  cloud  nor  forest  could  be 
known,  and  it  could  seldom  be  predicted  whether  the  vapors 
would  be  dissolved  as  they  floated  over  the  wood,  or  discharged 
upon  it  in  a  deluge  of  rain.  With  regard  to  possible  electrical 
influences  of  the  forest,  wider  still  in  their  range  of  action,  the 
uncertainty  is  even  greater.  The  data  which  alone  could  lead 
to  certain,  or  even  probable,  conclusions  are  wanting,  and  we 
should,  therefore,  only  embarrass  our  argument  by  any  attempt 
to  discuss  this  meteorological  element,  important  as  it  may  be, 
in  its  relations  of  cause  and  effect  to  more  familiar  and  better 
understood  meteoric  phenomena.  It  may,  however,  be  observed 
that  hail  storms — which  were  once  generally  supposed,  and  are 
still  held  by  many,  to  be  produced  by  a  specific  electrical 
action,  and  which,  at  least,  are  always  accompanied  by  elec 
trical  disturbances — are  believed,  in  all  countries  particularly 
exposed  to  that  scourge,  to  have  become  more  frequent  and 
destructive  in  proportion  as  the  forests  have  been  cleared. 
OaiiTii  observes :  "  When  the  chains  of  the  Alps  and  the  Apen 
nines  had  not  yet  been  stripped  of  their  magnificent  crown  of 
woods,  the  May  hail,  which  now  desolates  the  fertile  plains  of 
Lombardy,  was  much  less  frequent ;  but  since  the  general 
prostration  of  the  forest,  these  tempests  are  laying  waste  even 


HAIL    STOSMS.  14:1 

the  mountain  soils  wliose  older  inhabitants  scarcely  knew  thiu 
plague.*  The  paragrandinifi  which  the  learned  curate  of 
Rivolta  advised  to  erect,  with  sheaves  of  straw  set  up  verti 
cally,  over  a  great  extent  of  cultivated  country,  are  but  a  Lili- 
putian  image  of  the  vast  paragrandini,  pines,  larches,  firs, 
which  nature  had  planted  by  millions  on  the  crests  and  ridges 
of  the  Alps  and  the  Apennines."  :f  "  Electrical  action  being 
diminished,"  says  Meguscher,  "  and  the  rapid  congelation  of 
vapors  by  the  abstraction  of  heat  being  impeded  by  the  influ 
ence  of  the  woods,  it  is  rare  that  hail  or  waterspouts  are 
produced  within  the  precincts  of  a  large  forest  when  it  is 
assailed  by  the  tempest."  §  Arthur  Young  was  told  that  since 
the  forests  which  covered  the  mountains  between  the  Riviera 
and  the  county  of  Montferrat  had  disappeared,  hail  had  become 
more  destructive  in  the  district  of  Acqui,  ||  and  it  appears 

*  There  are,  in  Northern  Italy  and  in  Switzerland,  joint-stock  compa 
nies  which  insure  against  damage  by  hail,  as  well  as  by  fire  and  lightning. 
Between  the  years  1854  and  1861,  a  single  one  of  these  companies,  La 
Eiunione  Adriatica,  paid,  for  damage  by  hail  in  Piedmont,  Venetian  Lom- 
bardy,  and  the  Duchy  of  Parma,  above  6,500,000  francs,  or  nearly  $200,000 
per  year. 

f  The  paragrandinej  or,  as  it  is  called  in  French,  the  paragrele,  is  a 
species  of  conductor  by  which  it  has  been  hoped  to  protect  the  harvests  in 
countries  particularly  exposed  to  damage  by  hail.  It  was  at  first  proposed 
to  employ  for  this  purpose  poles  supporting  sheaves  of  straw  connected 
with  the  ground  by  the  same  material;  but  the  experiment  was  after 
ward  tried  in  Lombardy  on  a  large  scale,  with  more  perfect  electrical  con 
ductors,  consisting  of  poles  secured  to  the  top  of  tall  trees  and  provided 
with  a  pointed  wire  entering  the  ground  and  reaching  above  the  top  of  the 
pole.  It  was  at  first  thought  that  this  apparatus,  erected  at  numerous 
points  over  an  extent  of  several  miles,  was  of  some  service  as  a  protection 
against  hail,  but  this  opinion  was  soon  disputed,  and  does  not  appear  to  be 
supported  by  well-ascertained  facts.  The  question  of  a  repetition  of  the 
experiment  over  a  wide  area  has  been  again  agitated  within  a  very  few 
years  in  Lombardy  ;  but  the  doubts  expressed  by  very  able  physicists  as  to 
its  efficacy,  and  as  to  the  point  whether  hail  is  an  electrical  phenomenon, 
have  discouraged  its  advocates  from  attempting  it. 

J  Cenni  sulla  Importanza  e  Coltura  del  Boschi,  p.  6. 

§  Memoria  sui  Boscld,  etc.,  p.  44. 

y  Trarc-U  in  Italy,  chap.  iii. 


142     CHEMICAL  AND   METEOROLOGICAL  INFLUENCE   OF  FORESTS. 

upon  good  authority,  that  a  similar  increase  in  the  frequency 
and  violence  of  hail  storms  in  the  neighborhood  of  Saluzzo 
and  Mondovi,  the  lower  part  of  the  Yaltelline,  and  the  terri 
tory  of  Verona  and  Yicenza,  is  probably  to  be  ascribed  to  a 
similar  cause.* 

Chemical  Influence  of  the  Forest. 

We  know  that  the  air  in  a  close  apartment  is  appreciably 
affected  through  the  inspiration  and  expiration  of  gases  by 
plants  growing  in  it.  The  same  operations  are  performed  on 
a  gigantic  scale  by  the  forest,  and  it  has  even  been  supposed 
that  the  absorption  of  carbon,  by  the  rank  vegetation  of  earlier 
geological  periods,  occasioned  a  permanent  change  in  the  con 
stitution  of  the  terrestrial  atmosphere. f  To  the  effects  thus 
produced,  are  to  be  added  those  of  the  ultimate  gaseous  decom 
position  of  the  vast  vegetable  mass  annually  shed  by  trees,  and 
of  their  trunks  and  branches  when  they  fall  a  prey  to  time. 
But  the  quantity  of  gases  thus  abstracted  from  and  restored 
to  the  atmosphere  is  inconsiderable — infinitesimal,  one  might 
almost  say — in  comparison  with  the  ocean  of  air  from  which 
they  are  drawn  and  to  which  they  return  ;  and  though  the 
exhalations  from  bogs,  and  other  low  grounds  covered  with 
decaying  vegetable  matter,  are  highly  deleterious  to  human 
health,  yet,  in  general,  the  air  of  the  forest  is  hardly  chemi 
cally  distinguishable  from  that  of  the  sand  plains,  and  we  can 
as  little  trace  the  influence  of  the  woods  in  the  analysis  of  the 
atmosphere,  as  we  can  prove  that  the  mineral  ingredients  of 

*  Le  Alpi  die  cingono  I1  Italia,  i,  p.  S^V. 

t  "  Long  before  the  appearance  of  man,  *  *  *  they  [the  forests] 
had  robbed  the  atmosphere  of  the  enormous  quantity  of  carbonic  acid  it 
contained,  and  thereby  transformed  it  into  respirable  air.  Trees  heaped 
upon  trees  had  already  filled  up  the  ponds  and  marshes,  and  buried  with 
them  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth — to  restore  it  to  us  after  thousands  of  "ages 
in  the  form  of  bituminous  coal  and  of  anthracite — the  carbon  which  was 
destined  to  become,  by  this  wonderful  condensation,  a  precious  store  of 
future  wealth." — CLAYE,  Etudes  sur  V^conomie  Forestiere,  p.  13. 

This  opinion  of  the  modificat;on  of  the  atmosphere  by  vegetation  ia 
contested. 


INFLUENCE    OF   THE   FOEEST   ON   TEMPEliATUliE.  14:3 

land  springs  sensibly  affect  the  chemistry  of  tlie  sea.  I  may, 
then,  properly  dismiss  the  chemical,  as  I  have  done  the  elec« 
trical  influences  of  the  forest,  and  treat  them  both  alike,  if  not 
as  unimportant  agencies,  at  least  as  quantities  of  unknown 
value  in  our  meteorological  equation.*  Our  inquiries  upon 
this  branch  of  the  subject  will  accordingly  be  limited  to  the 
therm ornetrical  and  hygrometrieal  influences  of  the  woods. 

Influence  of  the  Forest,  considered  as  Inorganic  Matter, 
on  Temperature. 

The  evaporation  of  fluids,  and  the  condensation  and  expan 
sion  of  vapors  and  gases,  are  attended  with  changes  of  temper 
ature  ;  and  the  quantity  of  moisture  which  the  air  is  capable 
of  containing,  and,  of  course,  the  evaporation,  rise  and  fall 
with  the  thermometer.  The  hygroscopical  and  the  thermo- 
scopical  conditions  of  the  atmosphere  are,  therefore,  insep 
arably  connected  as  reciprocally  dependent  quantities,  and 
neither  can  be  fully  discussed  without  taking  notice  of  the 
other.  But  the  forest,  regarded  purely  as  inorganic  matter, 
and  without  reference  to  its  living  processes  of  absorption  and 
exhalation  of  water  and  gases,  has,  as  an  absorbent,  a  radiator 
and  a  conductor  of  heat,  and  as  a  mere  covering  of  the  ground, 
an  influence  on  the  temperature  of  the  air  and  the  earth,  which 
may  be  considered  by  itself. 

*  Schacht  ascribes  to  the  forest  a  specific,  if  not  a  measurable,  influence 
upon  the  constitution  of  the  atmosphere.  "  Plants  imbibe  from  the  air 
carbonic  acid  and  other  gaseous  or  volatile  products  exhaled  by  animals  or 
developed  by  the  natural  phenomena  of  decomposition.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  vegetable  pours  into  the  atmosphere  oxygen,  which  is  taken  up 
by  animals  and  appropriated  by  them.  The  tree,  by  means  of  its  leaves 
and  its  young  herbaceous  twigs,  presents  a  considerable  surface  for  absorp 
tion  and  evaporation ;  it  abstracts  the  carbon  of  carbonic  acid,  and  solidifies 
it  in  wood,  fecula,  and  a  multitude  of  other  compounds.  The  result  is  that 
a  forest  withdraws  from  the  air,  by  its  great  absorbent  surface,  much  more 
gas  than  meadows  or  cultivated  fields,  and  exhales  proportionally  a  con 
siderably  greater  quantity  of  oxygen.  The  influence  of  the  forests  on  the 
chemical  composition  of  the  atmosphere  is,  in  a  word,  of  the  highest  im 
portance."—  Lcs  Arbrcs,  p.  111.  See  Appendix,  "NTo.  23. 


14:4:  ABSORBING   AND   EMITTING-   SURFACE. 

a.  Absorbing  and  Emitting  Surface. 

A  given  area  of  ground,  as  estimated  by  the  every-day  rule 
of  measurement  in  yards  or  acres,  presents  always  the  same 
apparent  quantity  of  absorbing,  radiating,  and  reflecting  sur 
face  ;  but  the  real  extent  of  that  surface  is  very  variable, 
depending,  as  it  does,  upon  its  configuration,  and  the  bulk  and 
form  of  the  adventitious  objects  it  bears  upon  it ;  and,  besides, 
the  true  superficies  remaining  the  same,  its  power  of  absorp 
tion,  radiation,  reflection,  and  conduction  of  heat  will  be  much 
affected  by  its  consistence,  its  greater  or  less  humidity,  and  its 
color,  as  well  as  by  its  inclination  of  plane  and  exposure.* 

*  Composition,  texture  and  color  of  soil  are  important  elements  to  be 
considered  in  estimating  the  effects  of  the  removal  of  the  forest  upon  its 
thermoscopic  action.  "Experience  lias  proved,"  says  Becquerel,  "that 
when  the  soil  is  bared,  it  becomes  more  or  less  heatetl  [by  the  rays  of  the 
sun]  according  to  the  nature  and  the  color  of  the  particles  which  compose 
it,  and  according  to  its  humidity,  and  that,  in  the  refrigeration  resulting 
from  radiation,  we  must  take  into  the  account  the  conducting  power  of 
those  particles  also.  Other  things  being  equal,  silicious  and  calcareous 
sands,  compared  in  equal  volumes  writh  different  argillaceous  earths,  •with 
calcareous  powder  or  dust,  with  humus,  with  arable  and  with  garden  earth, 
are  the  soils  which  least  conduct  heat.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  sandy 
ground,  in  summer,  maintains  a  high  temperature  even  during  the  night. 
We  may  hence  conclude  that  when  a  sandy  soil  is  stripped  of  wood,  the 
local  temperature  will  be  raised.  After  the  sands  follow  successively  ar 
gillaceous,  arable,  and  garden  ground,  then  humus,  which  occupies  the 
lowest  rank.  If  we  represent  the  power  of  calcareous  sand  to  retain 
heat  by  100,  we  have,  according  to  Schubler, 

For  [silicious  ?]  sand 95.6 

"   arable  calcareous  soil 74.3 

"    argillaceous  earth 68.4 

"    garden  earth 64.8 

"   humus 49.0 

"  The  retentive  power  of  humus,  then,  is  but  half  as  great  as  that  of 
calcareous  sand.  We  will  add  that  the  power  of  retaining  heat  is  propor 
tional  to  the  density.  It  has  also  a  relation  to  the  magnitude  of  the  par 
ticles.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  ground  covered  with  silicious  pebbles 
cools  more  slowly  than  silicious  sand,  and  that  pebbly  soils  are  best  suited 
to  the  cultivation  of  the  vine,  because  they  advance  the  ripening  of  the 
grape  more  rapidly  than  chalky  and  clayey  earths,  which  cool  quickly. 


A13SOKBING   AND    EMITTING    SURFACE. 

An  acre  of  chalk,  rolled  hard  and  smooth,  would  have  great 
reflecting  power,  but  its  radiation  would  be  much  increased  by 
breaking  it  up  into  clods,  because  the  actually  exposed  surface 
would  be  greater,  though  the  outline  of  the  field  remained  the 
same.  The  area  of  a  triangle  being  equal  to  its  base  multi 
plied  by  half  the  length  of  a  perpendicular  let  fall  from  its 
apex,  it  follows  that  the  entire  superficies  of  the  triangular 
faces  of  a  quadrangular  pyramid,  the  perpendicular  of  whose 
sides  should  be  twice  the  length  of  the  base,  would  be  four 
times  the  area  of  the  ground  it  covered,  and  would  add  to  the 
field  on  which  it  stood  so  much  surface  capable  of  receiving 
and  emitting  heat,  though,  in  consequence  of  obliquity  and 
direction  of  plane,  its  actual  absorption  and  emission  of  heat 
might  not  be  so  great  as  that  of  an  additional  quantity  of  level 
ground  containing  four  times  the  area  of  its  base.  The  lesser 
inequalities  which  always  occur  in  the  surface  of -ordinary 
earth  affect  in  the  same  way  its  quantity  of  superficies  acting 
upon  the  temperature  of  the  atmosphere,  and  acted  on  by  it, 
though  the  amount  of  this  action  and  reaction  is  not  suscep 
tible  of  measurement. 

Analogous  effects  are  produced  by  other  objects,  of  what 
ever  form  or  character,  standing  or  lying  upon  the  earth,  and 
no  solid  can  be  placed  upon  a  fiat  piece  of  ground,  without 
itself  exposing  a  greater  surface  than  it  covers.  This  applies, 
of  course,  to  forest  trees  and  their  leaves,  and  indeed  to  all 
vegetables,  as  well  as  to  other  prominent  bodies.  If  we  sup* 
pose  forty  trees  to  be  planted  on  an  acre,  one  being  situated  in 
the  centre  of  every  square  of  two  rods  the  side,  and  to  grow 
until  their  branches  and  leaves  everywhere  meet,  it  is  evident 
that,  when  in  full  foliage,  the  trunks,  branches,  and  leaves 
would  present  an  amount  of  thermoscopic  surface  much 
greater  than  that  of  an  acre  of  bare  earth ;  and  besides  this, 
the  fallen  leaves  lying  scattered  on  the  ground,  would  some- 

Hence  we  see  that  in  examining  the  calorific  effects  of  clearing  forests,  it 
is  important  to  take  into  account  the  properties  of  the  soil  laid  bare." — 
BEOQFEKEL,  Des  CHmats  ci  dcs  Sols  "boisfo,  p.  13Y. 

10 


146  FORM  OF  LEAVES  IMPORTANT. 

what  augment  the  sum  total.*  On  the  other  hand,  the  grow 
ing  leaves  of  trees  generally  form  a  succession  of  stages,  or, 
loosely  speaking,  layers,  corresponding  to  the  annual  growth 
of  the  branches,  and  more  or  less  overlying  each  other.  This 
disposition  ol  the  foliage  interferes  with  that  free  communica 
tion  between  sun  and  sky  above,  and  leaf  surface  below,  on 
which  the  amount  of  radiation  and  absorption  of  heat  depends. 
From  all  these  considerations,  it  appears  that  though  the 
effective  thermoscopic  surface  of  a  forest  in  full  leaf  does  not 
exceed  that  of  bare  ground  in  the  same  proportion  as  does  its 
measured  superficies,  yet  the  actual  quantity  of  area  capable 
of  receiving  and  emitting  heat  must  be  greater  in  the  former 
than  in  the  latter  case.f 

It  must  further  be  remembered  that  the  form  and  texture 
of  a  given  surface  are  important  elements  in  determining  its 
thermoscopic  character.  Leaves  are  porous,  and  admit  air 
and  light  more  or  less  freely  into  their  substance ;  they  are 
generally  smooth  and  even  glazed  on  one  surface ;  they  are 
usually  covered  on  one  or  both  sides  with  spiculee,  and  they 
very  commonly  present  one  or  more  acuminated  points  in  their 
outline — all  circumstances  which  tend  to  augment  their  power 
of  emitting  heat  by  reflection  or  radiation.  Direct  experiment 
on  growing  trees  is  very  difficult,  nor  is  it  in  any  case  prac 
ticable  to  distinguish  how  far  a  reduction  of  temperature  pro 
duced  by  vegetation  is  due  to  radiation,  and  how  far  to  exha 
lation  of  the  fluids  of  the  plant  in  a  gaseous  form ;  for  both 
processes  usually  go  on  together.  But  the  frigorific  effect  of 
leafy  structure  is  well  observed  in  the  deposit  of  dew  and  the 
occurrence  of  hoarfrost  on  the  foliage  of  grasses  and  other 
small  vegetables,  and  on  other  objects  of  similar  form  and  con- 

*  "  The  Washington  elm  at  Cambridge— a  tree  of  no  extraordinary 
size — was  some  years  ago  estimated  to  produce  a  crop  of  seven  millions  of 
leaves,  exposing  a  surface  of  two  hundred  thousand  square  feet,  or  about 
five  acres  of  foliage." — GKAT,  First  Lessons  in  Botany  and  Vegetable  Physi 
ology,  as  quoted  by  COULTAS,  What  may  ~be  learned  from  a  Tree,  p.  34. 

t  See,  on  this  particular  point,  and  on  the  general  influence  of  the 
forest  on  temperature,  HUMBOLDT,  Ansichtcn  der  Natur,  i,  158. 


THE   FOKEST   IN    SUMMER   AND   WINTER.  147 

sistence,  when  the  temperature  of  the  air  a  few  yards  above 
lias  not  been  brought  down  to  the  dew  point,  still  less  to  32°, 
the  degree  of  cold  required  to  congeal  dew  to  frost.* 

b.  Trees  as  Conductors  of  Heat. 

We  are  also  to  take  into  account  the  action  of  the  forest  as 
a  conductor  of  heat  between  the  atmosphere  and  the  earth. 
In  the  most  important  countries  of  America  and  Europe,  and 
especially  in  those  which  have  suffered  most  from  the  destruc 
tion  of  the  woods,  the  superficial  strata  of  the  earth  are  colder 
in  winter,  and  warmer  in  summer  than  those  a  few  inches 
lower,  and  their  shifting  temperature  approximates  to  the 
atmospheric  mean  of  the  respective  seasons.  The  roots  of 
large  trees  penetrate  beneath  the  superficial  strata,  and  reach 
earth  of  a  nearly  constant  temperature,  corresponding  to  the 
mean  for  the  entire  year.  As  conductors,  they  convey  the 
heat  of  the  atmosphere  to  the  earth  when  the  earth  is  colder 
than  the  air,  and  transmit  it  in  the  contrary  direction  when 
the  temperature  of  the  earth  is  higher  than  that  of  the  atmo 
sphere.  Of  course,  then,  as  conductors,  they  tend  to  equalize 
the  temperature  of  the  earth  and  the  air. 

c.  Trees  in  Summer  and  Winter. 

In  countries  where  the  questions  I  am  considering  have 
the  greatest  practical  importance,  a  very  large  proportion,  if 
not  a  majority,  of  the  trees  are  of  deciduous  foliage,  and  their 
radiating  as  well  as  their  shading  surface  is  very  much  greater 
in  summer  than  in  winter.  In  the  latter  season,  they  little 
obstruct  the  reception  of  heat  by  the  ground  or  the  radiation 
from  it ;  whereas,  in  the  former,  they  often  interpose  a  complete 

*  Tlio  radiating  and  refrigerating  power  of  objects  by  no  means  depends 
on  their  form  alone.  Mclloni  cut  sheets  of  metal  into  the  shape  of  leaves 
and  grasses,  and  found  that  they  produced  little  cooling  effect,  and  were 
not  moistened  under  atmospheric  conditions  which  determined  a  plentiful 
deposit  of  dew  on  the  leaves  of  vegetables 


148  DEAD   PEODUCTS    OF   TREES — SOIL    OF    FOKEST. 

canopy  between  the  ground  and  the  sky,  and  materially  inter 
fere  with  both  processes. 

d.  Dead  Products  of  Trees. 

Besides  this  various  action  of  standing  trees  considered  as 
inorganic  matter,  the  forest  exercises,  by  the  annual  moulting 
of  its  foliage,  still  another  influence  on  the  temperature  of  the 
earth,  and,  consequently,  of  the  atmosphere  which  rests  upon 
it.  If  you  examine  the  constitution  of  the  superficial  soil  in  a 
primitive  or  an  old  and  undisturbed  artificially  planted  wood, 
you  find,  first,  a  deposit  of  undecayed  leaves,  twigs,  and  seeds, 
lying  in  loose  layers  'on  the  surface  ;  then,  more  compact  beds 
of  the  same  materials  in  incipient,  and,  as  you  descend,  more 
and  more  advanced  stages  of  decomposition  ;  then,  a  mass  of 
black  mould,  in  which  traces  of  organic  structure  are  hardly 
discoverable  except  by  microscopic  examination ;  then,  a 
stratum  of  mineral  soil,  more  or  less  mixed  with  vegetable 
matter  carried  down  into  it  by  water,  or  resulting  from  the 
decay  of  roots  ;  and,  finally,  the  inorganic  earth  or  rock  itself. 
Without  this  deposit  of  the  dead  products  of  trees,  this  latter 
would  be  the  superficial  stratum,  and  as  its  powers  of  absorp 
tion,  radiation,  and  conduction  of  heat  would  differ  essentially 
from  those  of  the  layers  with  which  it  has  been  covered  by  the 
droppings  of  the  forest,  it  would  act  upon  the  temperature  of 
the  atmosphere,  and  be  acted  on  by  it,  in  a  very  different  way 
from  the  leaves  and  mould  which  rest  upon  it.  Leaves,  still 
entire,  or  partially  decayed,  are  very  indifferent  conductors  of 
heat,  and,  therefore,  though  they  diminish  the  warming  influ 
ence  of  the  summer  sun  on  the  soil  below  them,  they,  on  the 
other  hand,  prevent  the  escape  of  heat  from  that  soil  in  win 
ter,  and,  consequently,  in  cold  climates,  even  when  the  ground 
is  not  covered  by  a  protecting  mantle  of  snow,  the  earth  does 
not  freeze  to  as  great  a  depth  in  the  wood  as  in  the  open  field. 


TREES   AS    A    SHELTER.  149 

e.  Trees  as  a  Shelter  to  Ground  to  the  Leeward. 

The  action  of  the  forest,  considered  merely  as  a  mechanical 
shelter  to  grounds  lying  to  the  leeward  of  it,  would  seem  to  be 
an  influence  of  too  restricted  a  character  to  deserve  much 
notice  ;  but  many  facts  concur  to  show  that  it  is  an  important 
element  in  local  climate,  and  that  it  is  often  a  valuable  means 
of  defence  against  the  spread  of  miasmatic  effluvia,  though,  in 
this  last  case,  it  may  exercise  a  chemical  as  well  as  a  mechan 
ical  agency.  In  the  report  of  a  committee  appointed  in  1836 
to  examine  an  article  of  the  forest  code  of  France,  Arago 
observes  :  "  If  a  curtain  of  forest  on  the  coasts  of  Normandy 
and  of  Brittany  were  destroyed,  these  two  provinces  would 
become  accessible  to  the  winds  from  the  west,  to  the  mild 
breezes  of  the  sea.  Hence  a  decrease  of  the  cold  of  winter. 
If  a  similar  forest  were  to  be  cleared  on  the  eastern  border 
of  France,  the  glacial  east  wind  would  prevail  with  greater 
strength,  and  the  winters  would  become  more  severe.  Thus 

O        J 

the  removal  of  a  belt  of  wood  wrould  produce  opposite  effects 
in  the  two  regions."  * 

This  opinion  receives  confirmation  from  an  observation  of 
Dr.  Dwight,  who  remarks,  in  reference  to  the  woods  of  New 
England  :  "  Another  effect  of  removing  the  forest  will  be  the 
free  passage  of  the  winds,  and  among  them  of  the  southern 
winds,  over  the  surface.  This,  I  think,  has  been  an  increasing 
fact  within  my  own  remembrance.  As  the  cultivation  of  the 
country  has  extended  farther  to  the  north,  the  winds  from  the 
south  have  reached  distances  more  remote  from  the  ocean,  and 
imparted  their  warmth  frequently,  and  in  such  degrees  as, 
forty  years  since,  were  in  the  same  places  very  little  known. 
This  fact,  also,  contributes  to  lengthen  the  summer,  and  to 
shorten  the  winter-half  of  the  year."  f 

It  is  thought  in  Italy  that  the  clearing  of  the  Apennines 
has  very  materially  affected  the  climate  of  the  valley  of  the 
Po.  It  is  asserted  in  Le  Alpi  che  cingono  I'ltalia  that :  u  In 

*  BKCQTJEREL,  DCS  Climats,  etc.,  Dfcc.<»iv&  Prelim,  vi.          t  Travels,  i,  p.  61 


150  THE  FOEEST  AS  A  SHELTER. 

consequence  of  the  felling  of  the  woods  011  the  Apennines,  tho 
sirocco  prevails  greatly  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Po,  in  the 
Parmesan  territory,  and  in  a  part  of  Lombardy  ;  it  injures  the 
harvests  and  the  vineyards,  and  sometimes  rnins  the  crops  of 
the  season.  To  the  same  cause  many  ascribe  the  meteoro 
logical  changes  in  the  precincts  of  Modena  and  of  Reggio.  In 
the  communes  of  these  districts,  where  formerly  straw  roofs 
resisted  the  force  of  the  winds,  tiles  are  now  hardly  sufficient ; 
in  others,  where  tiles  answered  for  roofs,  large  slabs  of  stone 
are  now  ineffectual ;  and  in  many  neighboring  communes  the 
grapes  and  the  grain  are  swept  off  by  the  blasts  of  the  south 
and  southwest  winds." 

On  the  other  hand,  according  to  the  same  authority,  the 
pinery  of  Porto,  near  Ravenna — which  is  33  kilometres  long, 
and  is  one  of  the  oldest  pine  woods  in  Italy — having  been 
replanted  with  resinous  trees  after  it  was  unfortunately  cut, 
has  relieved  the  city  from  the  sirocco  to  which  it  had  become 
exposed,  and  in  a  great  degree  restored  its  ancient  climate.* 

The  felling  of  the  woods  on  the  Atlantic  coast  of  Jutland 
has  exposed  the  soil  not  only  to  drifting  sands,  but  to  sharp 
sea  winds,  that  have  exerted  a  sensible  deteriorating  effect  on 
the  climate  of  that  peninsula,  which  has  no  mountains  to  serve 
at  once  as  a  barrier  to  the  force  of  the  winds,  and  as  a  store 
house  of  moisture  received  by  precipitation  or  condensed  from 
atmospheric  vapors,  f 

It  is  evident  that  the  effect  of  the  forest,  as  a  mechanical 
impediment  to  the  passage  of  the  wind,  would  extend  to  a  very 
considerable  distance  above  its  own  height,  and  hence  protect 
while  standing,  or  lay  open  when  felled,  a  much  larger  surface 
than  might  at  first  thought  be  supposed.  The  atmosphere, 
movable  as  are  its  particles,  and  light  and  elastic  as  are  its 
masses,  is  nevertheless  held  together  as  a  continuous  wiiole  by  the 
gravitation  of  its  atoms  and  their  consequent  pressure  on  each 
other,  if  not  by  attraction  between  them,  and,  therefore,  an  ob 
struction  which  mechanically  impedes  the  movement  of  a  given 

*  Le  Alpi  cJie  cingono  Vltalia,  pp.  370,  371. 
t  BERGSOE,  Rcventlow  Virfoomked,  ii,  p.  125. 


THE  FOREST  AS  A  SHELTER.  151 

stratum  of  air,  will  retard  the  passage  of  tlie  strata  above  and 
below  it.  To  this  effect  may  often  be  added  that  of  an  ascend 
ing  current  from  the  forest  itself,  which  must  always  exist 
when  the  atmosphere  within  the  wood  is  warmer  than  the 
stratum  of  air  above  it,  and  must  be  of  almost  constant  occur 
rence  in  the  case  of  cold  winds,  from  whatever  quarter,  because 
the  still  air  in  the  forest  is  slow  in  taking  up  the  temperature 
of  the  moving  columns  and  currents  around  and  above  it. 
Experience,  in  fact,  has  shown  that  mere  rows  of  trees,  and 
even  much  lower  obstructions,  are  of  essential  service  in  de 
fending  vegetation  against  the  action  of  the  wind.  Hardy 
proposes  planting,  in  Algeria,  belts  of  trees  at  the  distance  of 
one  hundred  metres  from  each  other,  as  a  shelter  which  expe 
rience  had  proved  to  be  useful  in  France.*  "  In  the  valley  of 
the  Rhone,"  says  Becquerel,  "  a  simple  hedge,  two  metres  in 
height,  is  a  sufficient  protection  for  a  distance  of  twenty-two 
metres."  f  The  mechanical  shelter  acts,  no  doubt,  chiefly  as 
a  defence  against  the  mechanical  force  of  the  wind,  but  its  uses 
are  by  no  means  limited  to  this  effect.  If  the  currrent  of  air 
which  it  resists  moves  horizontally,  it  would  prevent  the  access 
of  cold  or  parching  blasts  to  the  ground  for  a  great  distance ; 
and  did  the  wind  even  descend  at  a  large  angle  writh  the  sur 
face,  still  a  considerable  extent  of  ground  would  be  protected 
by  a  forest  to  the  windward  of  it.  If  we  suppose  the  trees  of 
a  wood  to  have  a  mean  height  of  only  twenty  yards,  they 
would  often  beneficially  affect  the  temperature  or  the  moistur£ 
of  a  belt  of  land  two  or  three  hundred  yards  in  width,  and  thus 
perhaps  rescue  valuable  crops  from  destruction.^: 


*  BECQUEREL,  DCS  Climate,  etc.,  p.  179.  t  Ibid.,  p.  116. 

\  The  following  well-attested  instance  of  a  local  change  of  climate  is 
probably  to  be  referred  to  the  influence  of  the  forest  as  a  shelter  against 
cold  winds.  To  supply  the  extraordinary  demand  for  Italian  iron  occa 
sioned  by  the  exclusion  of  English  iron  in  the  time  of  Kapoleon  I,  the 
furnaces  of  the  valleys  of  Bergamo  were  stimulated  to  great  activity. 
"  The  ordinary  production  of  charcoal  not  sufficing  to  feed  the  furnaces 
and  the  forges,  the  woods  were  felled,  the  copses  cut  before  their  time,  and 
the  whole  economy  of  the  forest  was  deranged.  At  Piazzatorre  there  wag 


152  RETARDATION    OF   SPRING. 

The  local  retardation  of  spring  so  much  complained  of  in 
Italy,  France,  and  Switzerland,  and  the  increased  frequency  of 
late  frosts  at  that  season,  appear  to  "be  ascribable  to  the  admis 
sion  of  cold  blasts  to  the  surface,  by  the  felling  of  the  forests 
which  formerly  both  screened  it  as  by  a  wall,  and  communi 
cated  the  warmth  of  their  soil  to  the  air  and  earth  to  the 
leeward.  Caimi  states  that  since  the  cutting  down  of  the 
woods  of  the  Apennines,  the  cold  winds  destroy  or  stunt  the 
vegetation,  and  that,  in  consequence  of  "  the  usurpation  of 
winter  on  the  domain  of  spring,"  the  district  of  Mugello  has 
lost  all  its  mulberries,  except  the  few  which  find  in  the  lee  of 
buildings  a  protection  like  that  once  furnished  by  the  forest.* 

"  It  is  proved,"  says  Clave,  "  Etudes,"  p.  44,  that  the  de 
partment  of  Ardeche,  which  now  contains  not  a  single  consid 
erable  wood,  has  experienced  within  thirty  years  a  climatic 
disturbance,  of  which  the  late  frosts,  formerly  unknown  in  the 
country,  are  one  of  the  most  melancholy  effects.  Similar 
results  have  been  observed  in  the  plain  of  Alsace,  in  conse 
quence  of  the  denudation  of  several  of  the  crests  of  the 
Yosges." 

such  a  devastation  of  the  woods,  and  consequently  such  an  increased 
severity  of  climate,  that  maize  no  longer  ripened.  An  association,  formed 
for  the  purpose,  effected  the  restoration  of  the  forest,  and  maize  nourishes 
again  in  the  fields  of  Piazzatorre." — Report  by  G.  ROSA,  in  II  Politccnico, 
Dicembre,  1861,  p.  614. 

Similar  ameliorations  have  been  produced  by  plantations  in  Belgium. 
In  an  interesting  series  of  articles  by  Baude,  entitled  "  Les  Cotes  de  la 
Manche,"  in  the  JRevue  des  Deux  Mondes,  I  find  this  statement :  "A  spec 
tator  placed  on  the  famous  bell  tower  of  the  cathedral  of  Antwerp,  saw, 
not  long  since,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Schelde  only  a  vast  desert  plain ; 
now  he  sees  a  forest,  the  limits  of  which  are  confounded  with  the  horizon. 
Let  him  enter  within  its  shade.  The  supposed  forest  is  but  a  system  of 
regular  rows  of  trees,  the  oldest  of  which  is  not  forty  years  of  age.  These 
plantations  have  ameliorated  the  climate  which  had  doomed  to  sterility  the 
soil  where  they  are  planted.  While  the  tempest  is  violently  agitating  their 
tops,  the  air  a  little  beloAv  is  still,  and  sands  far  more  barren  than  the 
plateau  of  La  Hague  have  been  transformed,  under  their  protection,  into 
fertile  fields." — Revue  des  Deux  Mondcs,  January,  1859,  p.  277. 

*  Cenni  sulla  Importanza  e  Coltura  del  Boschi,  p.  31. 


THE   MISTRAL    US'   FRANCE DETERIORATION    OF    CLIMATE.     153 

Dnssard,  as  quoted  by  Ribbe,*  maintains  that  even  the 
mistral,  or  northwest  wind,  whose  chilling  blasts  are  so  fatal 
to  tender  vegetation  in  the  spring,  "  is  the  child  of  man,  the 
result  of  his  devastations."  "  Under  the  reign  of  Augustus," 
continues  he,  "  the  forests  which  protected  the  Cevennes  were 
felled,  or  destroyed  by  fire,  in  mass.  A  vast  country,  before 
covered  with  impenetrable  woods — powerful  obstacles  to  the 
movement  and  even  to  the  formation  of  hurricanes — was  sud 
denly  denuded,  swept  bare,  stripped,  and  soon  after,  a  scourge 
hitherto  unknown  struck  terror  over  the  land  from  Avignon 
to  the  Bouches  du  Rhone,  thence  to  Marseilles,  and  then  ex 
tended  its  ravages,  diminished  indeed  by  a  long  career  which 
had  partially  exhausted  its  force,  over  the  whole  maritime 
frontier.  The  people  thought  this  wind  a  curse  sent  of  God. 
They  raised  altars  to  it  and  offered  sacrifices  to  appease  its 
rage."  It  seems,  however,  that  this  plague  was  less  destruc 
tive  than  at  present,  until  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
when  further  clearings  had  removed  most  of  the  remaining 
barriers  to  its  course.  Up  to  that  time,  the  northwest  wind 
.appears  not  to  have  attained  to  the  maximum  of  specific  effect 
which  now  characterizes  it  as  a  local  phenomenon.  Extensive 
districts,  from  which  the  rigor  of  the  seasons  has  now  banished 
valuable  crops,  were  not  then  exposed  to  the  loss  of  their  har 
vests  by  tempests,  cold,  or  drought.  The  deterioration  was 
rapid  in  its  progress.  Under  the  Consulate,  the  clearings  had 
exerted  so  injurious  an  effect  upon  the  climate,  that  the  culti 
vation  of  the  olive  had  retreated  several  leagues,  and  since  the 
winters  and  springs  of  1820  and  1836,  this  branch  of  rural 
industry  has  been  abandoned  in  a  great  number  of  localities 
where  it  was  advantageously  pursued  before.  The  orange  now 
flourishes  only  at  a  few  sheltered  points  of  the  coast,  and  it  is 
threatened  even  at  Ilyeres,  where  the  clearing  of  the  hills  near 
the  town  has  proved  very  prejudicial  to  this  valuable  tree. 

Marchand  informs  us  that,  since  the  felling  of  the  woods, 
late  spring  frosts  are  more  frequent  in  many  localities  north 

*  La  Provence  ait  point  de  i-ue  des  Torrents  ct  dcs  Inondations,  p.  19. 


154:  PROTECTION  AGAINST  MALARIA. 

of  the  Alps  ;  that  fruit  trees  thrive  well  no  longer,  and  that  it 
is  difficult  to  raise  young  trees.* 


f.  Trees  as  a  Protection  against  Malaria. 

The  influence  of  forests  in  preventing  the  diffusion  of  mias 
matic  vapors  is  a  matter  of  less  familiar  observation,  and  per 
haps  does  not  come  strictly  within  the  sphere  of  the  present 
inquiry,  but  its  importance  will  justify  me  in  devoting  some 
space  to  the  subject.  "  It  has  been  observed  "  (I  quote  again 
from  Becquerel)  "  that  humid  air,  charged  with  miasmata,  is 
deprived  of  them  in  passing  through  the  forest.  Rigaud  de 
Lille  observed  localities  in  Italy  where  the  interposition  of  a 
screen  of  trees  preserved  everything  beyond  it,  wThile  the 
unprotected  grounds  were  subject  to  fevers."  f  Few  European 
countries  present  better  opportunities  for  observation  on  this 
point  than  Italy,  because  in  that  kingdom  the  localities  ex 
posed  to  miasmatic  exhalations  are  numerous,  and  belts  of 
trees,  if  not  forests,  are  of  so  frequent  occurrence  that  their 
efficacy  in  this  respect  can  be  easily  tested.  The  belief  that 
rows  of  trees  afford  an  important  protection  against  malarious 
influences  is  very  general  among  Italians  best  qualified  by 
intelligence  and  professional  experience  to  judge  upon  the 
subject.  The  commissioners  appointed  to  report  on  the  meas 
ures  to  be  adopted  for  the  improvement  of  the  Tuscan  Ma- 
remme  advised  the  planting  of  three  or  four  rows  of  poplars, 
Populus  alba,  in  such  directions  as  to  obstruct  the  currents  of 
air  from  malarious  localities,  and  thus  intercept  a  great  pro 
portion  of  the  pernicious  exhalations."  ^  Lieutenant  Maury 
even  believed  that  a  few  rows  of  sunflowers,  planted  between  the 
Washington  Observatory  and  the  marshy  banks  of  the  Poto 
mac,  had  saved  the  inmates  of  that  establishment  from  the 
intermittent  fevers  to  which  they  had  been  formerly  liable. 

*   Ueber  die  Entwaldunfj  der  Gebirge,  p.  28. 
t  BECQTJEEEL,  Des  Glimats,  etc.,  p.  9. 

'J  SALYAGNOLI,  Rapporto  sul  Bonificamento  delle  Maremme  Tosczne,  pp. 
xli,  124. 


PROTECTION    AGAIXST   MALARIA.  155 

Maury's  experiments  have  been  repeated  in  Italy.  Large 
plantations  of  sunflowers  have  been  made  upon  the  alluvial 
deposits  of  the  Oglio,  above  its  entrance  into  the  Lake  of  Iseo 
near  Pisogne,  and  it  is  said  with  favorable  results  to  the  health 
of  the  neighborhood.*  In  fact,  the  generally  beneficial  effects 
of  a  forest  wall  or  other  vegetable  screen,  as  a  protection  against 
noxious  exhalations  from  marshes  or  other  sources  of  disease 
situated  to  the  windward  of  them,  are  very  commonly  admitted. 
It  is  argued  that,  in  these  cases,  the  foliage  of  trees  and  of 
othe3*  vegetables  exercises  a  chemical  as  well  as  a  mechanical 
effect  upon  the  atmosphere,  and  some,  who  allow  that  forests 
may  intercept  the  circulation  of  the  miasmatic  effluvia  of 
swampy  soils,  or  even  render  them  harmless  by  decomposing 
them,  contend,  nevertheless,  that  they  are  themselves  active 
causes  of  the  production  of  malaria.  The  subject  has  been  a 
good  deal  discussed  in  Italy,  and  there  is  some  reason  to  think 
that  under  special  circumstances  the  influence  of  the  forest  in 
this  respect  may  be  prejudicial  rather  than  salutary,  though 
this  does  not  appear  to  be  generally  the  case.f  It  is,  at  all 
events,  well  known  that  the  great  swamps  of  Virginia  and  the 
CaroJinas,  in  climates  nearly  similar  to  that  of  Italy,  are  healthy 
even  to  the  white  man,  so  long  as  the  forests  in  and  around 
them  remain,  but  become  very  insalubrious  when  the  woods 
are  felled.;}; 

The  Forest,  as  Inorganic  Matter,  tends  to  mitigate  Extremes. 

The  surface  which  trees  and  leaves  present  augments  the 
general  superficies  of  the  earth  exposed  to  the  absorption  of 

*  II  Politecnico,  Hilano,  Aprile  e  Naggio,  1863,  p.  35. 

t  SALVAGNOLI,  Memorie  sulle  Maremme  Toscane,  pp.  213,  214. 

J  Except  in  the  seething  marshes  of  the  tropics,  where  vegetable  decay 
is  extremely  rapid,  the  uniformity  of  temperature  and  of  atmospheric  hu 
midity  renders  all  forests  eminently  healthful.  See  HOHENSTEIN'S  obser 
vations  on  this  subject,  Der  Wald,  p.  41. 

There  is  no  question  that  open  squares  and  parks  conduce  to  the  salu 
brity  of  cities,  and  many  observers  are  of  opinion  that  the  trees  and  other 
vegetables  with  which  such  grounds  are  planted  contribute  essentially  to 
their  beneficial  influence.  See  an  article  in  Aus.  dcr  Na-tur,  xxii,  p.  813., 


156  SPECIFIC    TEMPERATURE   OF   TREES. 

heat,  and  increases  the  radiatinc;  and  reflecting  area  in  the 

"  O  O 

same  proportion.  It  is  impossible  to  measure  the  relative 
value  of  these  two  elements — increase  of  absorbing  and  in 
crease  of  emitting  surface — as  therm ometrical  influences, 
because  they  exert  themselves  under  infinitely  varied  condi 
tions  ;  and  it  is  equally  impossible  to  make  a  quantitative  esti 
mate  of  any  partial,  still  more  of  the  total  effect  of  the  forest, 
considered  as  dead  matter,  on  the  temperature  of  the  atmos 
phere,  and  of  the  portion  of  the  earth's  surface  acted  on  by  it. 
But  it  seems  probable  that  its  greatest  influence  in  this  respect 
is  due  to  its  character  of  a  screen,  or  mechanical  obstacle  to 
the  transmission  of  heat  between  the  earth  and  the  air ;  and 
this  is  equally  true  of  the  standing  tree  and  of  the  dead 
foliage  which  it  deposits  in  successive  layers  at  its  foot. 

The  complicated  action  of  trees  and  their  products,  as  dead 
absorbents,  radiators,  reflectors,  and  conductors  of  heat,  and  as 
intercepters  of  its  transmission,  is  so  intimately  connected  with 
their  effects  upon  the  humidity  of  the  air  and  the  earth,  and 
with  all  their  living  processes,  that  it  is  difficult  to  separate 
the  former  from  the  latter  class  of  influences ;  but  upon  the 
whole,  the  forest  must  thus  far  be  regarded  as  tending  to  miti 
gate  extremes,  and,  therefore,  as  an  equalizer  of  temperature. 

TREES  AS  ORGANISMS. 
Specific  Heat. 

Trees,  considered  as  organisms,  produce  in  themselves,  or 
in  the  air,  a  certain  amount  of  heat,  by  absorbing  and  con 
densing  atmospheric  vapor,  and  they  exert  an  opposite  influ 
ence  by  absorbing  water  and  exhaling  it  in  the  form  of  vapor  ; 
but  there  is  still  another  mode  by  which  their  living  processes 
may  warm  the  air  around  them,  independently  of  the  ther- 
mometric  effects  of  condensation  and  evaporation.  The  vital 
heat  of  a  dozen  persons  raises  the  temperature  of  a  room.  If 
trees  possess  a  specific  temperature  of  .their  own,  an  organic 
power  of  generating  heat,  like  that  with  which  the  warm 
blooded  animals  are  gifted,  though  by  a  different  process,  a 


SPECIFIC    TEMPERATURE    OF   TREES.  157 

certain  amount  of  weight  is  to  be  ascribed  to  this  element,  in 
estimating  the  action  of  the  forest  upon  atmospheric  temper 
ature. 

"  Observation  shows,"  says  Megusclier,  "  that  the  wood  of 
a  living  tree  maintains  a  temperature  of  -f  12°  or  13°  Cent. 
[=  54°,  56°  Fahr.]  when  the  temperature  of  the  air  stands  at 
3°,  7°,  and  8°  [=  37°,  46°,  47°  F.]  above  zero,  and  that  the 
internal  warmth  of  the  tree  does  not  rise  and  fall  in  proportion 
to  that  of  the  atmosphere.  So  long  as  the  latter  is  below  18° 
[=  67°  Fahr.],  that  of  the  tree  is  always  the  highest ;  but  if  the 
temperature  of  the  air  rises  to  18°,  that  of  the  vegetable  growth 
is  the  lowest.  Since,  then,  trees  maintain  at  all  seasons  a  con 
stant  mean  temperature  of  12°  [=  54°  Fahr.],  it  is  easy  to  see 
why  the  air  in  contact  with  the  forest  must  be  warmer  in  win 
ter,  cooler  in  summer,  than  in  situations  where  it  is  deprived 
of  that  influence."  * 

Boussingault  remarks  :  "  In  many  flowers  there  has  been 
observed  a  very  considerable  evolution  of  heat,  at  the  approach 
of  fecundation.  In  certain  arums  the  temperature  rises  to  40° 
or  50°  Cent.  [=  104°  or  122°  Fahr.].  It  is  very  probable  that 
this  phenomenon  is  general,  and  varies  only  in  the  intensity 
with  which  it  is  manifested."  f 

If  we  suppose  the  fecundation  of  the  flowers  of  forest  trees 
to  be  attended  with  a  tenth  only  of  this  calorific  power,  they 
could  not  fail  to  exert  an  important  influence  on  the  warmth 
of  the  atmospheric  strata  in  contact  with  them. 

In  a  paper  on  Meteorology  by  Professor  Henry,  published 
in  the  United  States  Patent  Office  Keport  for  1857,  p.  504, 
that  distinguished  physicist  observes :  "  As  a  general  deduc 
tion  from  chemical  and  mechanical  principles,  we  think  no 
change  of  temperature  is  ever  produced  where  the  actions 
belonging  to  one  or  both  of  these  principles  are  not  present. 
Hence,  in  midwinter,  when  all  vegetable  functions  are  dor 
mant,  we  do  not  believe  that  any  heat  is  developed  by  a  tree, 
or  that  its  interior  differs  in  temperature  from  its  exterior 

*  Memoria  sui  BoscJii  dl  Loiribardia,  p.  45.        t  Economic  Rurale,  i3  p.  22. 


158  SPECIFIC    TEMPERATURE   OF   TREES. 

further  than  it  is  protected  from  the  external  air.  The 
experiments  which  have  been  made  on  this  point,  we  think, 
have  been  directed  by  a  false  analogy.  During  the  active 
circulation  of  the  sap  and  the  production  of  new  tissue, 
variations  of  temperature  belonging  exclusively  to  the  plant 
may  be  observed;  but  it  is  inconsistent  with  general  prin 
ciples  that  heat  should  be  generated  where  no  change  is 
taking  place." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  moisture  is  given  out  by  trees 
and  evaporated  in  extremely  cold  winter-weather,  and  unless 
new  fluid  were  supplied  from  the  roots,  the  tree  would  be 
exhausted  of  its  juices  before  winter  was  over.  But  this  is  not 
observed  to  be  the  fact,  and,  though  the  point  is  disputed, 
respectable  authorities  declare  that  "  wood  felled  in  the  depth 
of  winter  is  the  heaviest  and  fullest  of  sap."  *  Warm  weather 
in  winter,  of  too  short  continuance  to  affect  the  temperature 
of  the  ground  sensibly,  stimulates  a  free  flow  of  sap  in  the 
maple.  Thus,  in  the  last  week  of  December,  1862,  and  the 
first  week  of  January,  1863,  sugar  was  made  from  that  tree,  in 
various  parts  of  New  England.  "  A  single  branch  of  a  tree, 
admitted  into  a  warm  room  in  winter  through  an  aperture  in 
a  window,  opened  its  buds  and  developed  its  leaves  while  the 
rest  of  the  tree  in  the  external  air  remained  in  its  winter 
sleep."  f  The  roots  of  forest  trees  in  temperate  climates, 
remain,  for  the  most  part,  in  a  moist  soil,  of  a  temperature  not 
much  below  the  annual  mean,  through  the  whole  winter  ;  and 
we  cannot  account  for  the  uninterrupted  moisture  of  the  tree, 
unless  we  suppose  that  the  roots  furnish  a  constant  supply  of 
water. 

Atkinson  describes  a  ravine  in  a  valley  in  Siberia,  which 
was  filled  with  ice  to  the  depth  of  twenty-five  feet.  Poplars 
were  growing  in  this  ice,  which  was  thawed  to  the  distance  of 
some  inches  from  the  stem.  But  the  surface  of  the  soil  beneath 
it  must  have  remained  still  frozen,  for  the  holes  around  the 
trees  were  full  of  water  resulting  from  its  melting,  and  thifl 

*  EOSSMASSLER,  Der  W«M,  p.  158.  t  Ibid.,  p.  160. 


TOTAL  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST.  159 

would  have  escaped  below  if  the  ground  had  been  thawed.  In 
this  case,  although  the  roots  had  not  thawed  the  thick  covering 
of  earth  above  them,  the  trunks  must  have  melted  the  ice  in 
contact  with  them.  The  trees,  when  observed  by  Atkinson, 
were  in  full  leaf,  but  it  does  not  appear  at  what  period  the  ice 
around  their  stems  had  melted. 

From  these  facts,  and  others  of  the  like  sort,  it  would  seem 
that  "  all  vegetable  functions  are  "  not  absolutely  "  dormant  " 
in  winter,  and,  therefore,  that  trees  may  give  out  some  heat  at 
that  season.  But,  however  this  may  be,  the  "  circulation  of 
the  sap  "  commences  at  a  very  early  period  in  the  spring,  and 
the  temperature  of  the  air  in  contact  with  trees  may  then  be 
sufficiently  affected  by  heat  evolved  in  the  vital  processes  of 
vegetation,  to  raise  the  thermometric  mean  of  wooded  coun 
tries  for  that  season,  and,  of  course,  for  the  year.* 

Total  Influence  of  the  Forest  on  Temperature. 

It  has  not  yet  been  found  practicable  to  measure,  sum  up, 
and  equate  the  total  influence  of  the  forest,  its  processes  and  its 
products,  dead  and  living,  upon  temperature,  and  investigators 
differ  much  in  their  conclusions  on  this  subject.  It  seems 

*  The  low  temperature  of  air  and  soil  at  which,  in  the  frigid  zone,  as 
well  as  in  warmer  latitudes  under  special  circumstances,  the  processes  of 
vegetation  go  on,  seems  to  necessitate  the  supposition  that  all  the  manifes 
tations  of  vegetable  life  are  attended  with  an  evolution  of  heat.  In  the- 
United  States,  it  is  common  to  protect  ice,  in  icehouses,  by  a  covering  of 
straw,  which  naturally  sometimes  contains  kernels  of  grain.  These  often 
sprout,  and  even  throw  out  roots  and  leaves  to  a  considerable  length,  in  a 
temperature  very  little  above  the  freezing  point.  Three  or  four  years  since, 
I  saw  a  lump  of  very  clear  and  apparently  solid  ice,  about  eight  inches  long 
by  six  thick,  on  which  a  kernel  of  grain  had  sprouted  in  an  icehouse,  and 
sent  half  a  dozen  or  more  very  slender  roots  into  the  pores  of  the  ice  and 
through  the  whole  length  of  the  lump.  The  young  plant  must  have  thrown 
out  a  considerable  quantity  of  heat ;  for  though  the  ice  was,  as  I  have  said, 
otherwise  solid,  the  pores  through  which  the  roots  passed  were  enlarged  to 
perhaps  double  the  diameter  of  the  fibres,  but  still  not  so  much  as  to  pre 
vent  the  retention  of  water  in  them  by  capillary  attraction.  See  App.  24. 


160  TOTAL  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST. 

probable  that  in  every  particular  case  the  result  is,  if  not  deter 
mined,  at  least  so  much  modified  by  local  conditions  which  are 
infinitely  varied,  that  no  general  formula  is  applicable  to  the 
question. 

In  the  report  to  which  I  referred  on  page  149,  Gay-Lussac 
says  :  "In  my  opinion  we  have  not  yet  any  positive  proof  that 
the  forest  lias,  in  itself,  any  real  influence  on  the  climate  of  a 
great  country,  or  of  a  particular  locality.  By  closely  examin 
ing  the  effects  of  clearing  off  the  woods,  we  should  perhaps 
find  that,  far  from  being  an  evil,  it  is  an  advantage  ;  but  these 
questions  are  so  complicated  when  they  are  examined  in  a 
climatological  point  of  view,  that  the  solution  of  them  is  very 
difficult,  not  to  say  impossible." 

Becquerel,  on  the  other  hand,  considers  it  certain  that  in 
tropical  climates,  the  destruction  of  the  forests  is  accompanied 
with  an  elevation  of  the  mean  temperature,  and  he  thinks  it 
highly  probable  that  it  has  the  same  effect  in  the  temperate 
zones.  The  following  is  the  substance  of  his  remarks  on  this 
subject : — 

"  Forests  act  as  frigorific  causes  in  three  ways  : 

"  1.  They  shelter  the  ground  against  solar  irradiation  and 
maintain  a  greater  humidity. 

"  2.  They  produce  a  cutaneous  transpiration  by  the  leaves. 

"  3.  They  multiply,  by  the  expansion  of  their  branches,  the 
surfaces  which  are  cooled  by  radiation. 

"  These  three  causes  acting  with  greater  or  less  force,  we 
must,  in  the  study  of  the  climatology  of  a  country,  take  into 
account  the  proportion  between  the  area  of  the  forests  and  the 
surface  which  is  bared  of  trees  and  covered  with  herbs  and 
grasses. 

"  We  should  be  inclined  to  believe  a  priori,  according  to 
the  foregoing  considerations,  that  the  clearing  of  the  woods, 
by  raising  the  temperature  and  increasing  the  dryness  of  the 
air,  ought  to  react  on  climate.  There  is  no  doubt  that,  if  the 
vast  desert  of  the  Sahara  were  to  become  wooded  in  the  course 
of  ages,  the  sands  would  cease  to  be  heated  as  much  as  at  the 
present  epoch,  when  the  mean  temperature  is  twenty-nine 


TOTAL   INFLUENCE    OF    THE   FOREST.  161 

degrees  [centigrade,  —  85°  Fahr.].  In  that  case,  the  ascend 
ing  currents  of  warm  air  would  cease,  or  be  less  warm,  and 
would  not  contribute,  by  descending  in  our  latitudes,  to  soften 
the  climate  of  Western  Europe.  Thus  the  clearing  of  a  great 
country  may  react  on  the  climates  of  regions  more  or  less 
remote  from  it. 

"  The  observations  by  Boussingault  leave  no  doubt  on  this 
point.  This  writer  determined  the  mean  temperature  of 
wooded  and  of  cleared  points,  under  the  same  latitude,  and- at 
the  same  elevation  above  the  sea,  in  localities  comprised  be 
tween  the  eleventh  degree  of  north  and  the  fifth  degree  of 
south  latitude,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  portion  of  the  tropics 
nearest  to  the  equator,  and  where  radiation  tends  powerfully 
during  the  night  to  lower  the  temperature  under  a  sky  with 
out  clouds."  * 

The  result  of  these  observations,  which  has  been  pretty 
generally  adopted  by  physicists,  is  that  the  mean  temperature 
of  cleared  land  in  the  tropics  appears  to  be  about  one  degree 
centigrade,  or  a  little  less  than  two  degrees  of  Fahrenheit, 
above  that  of  the  forest.  On  page  147  of  the  volume  just 
cited,  Becquerel  argues  that,  inasmuch  as  the  same  and  some 
times  a  greater  difference  is  found  in  favor  of  the  open  ground, 
at  points  within  the  tropics  so  elevated  as  to  have  a  temperate 
or  even  a  polar  climate,  we  must  conclude  that  the  forests  in 
Northern  America  exert  a  refrigerating  influence  equally  pow 
erful.  But  the  conditions  of  the  soil  are  so  different  in  the  two 
regions  compared,  that  I  think  we  cannot,  with  entire  con 
fidence,  reason  from  the  one  to  the  other,  and  it  is  much  to  be 
desired  that  observations  be  made  on  the  summer  and  winter 
temperature  of  both  the  air  and  the  ground  in  the  depths  of 
the  North  American  forests,  before  it  is  too  late.f 


*  BECQUEREL,  DCS  Climats,  etc.,  pp.  139 — 141. 

t  Dr.  TVilliarns  made  some  observations  on  this  subject  in  1780,  and  in 

1791,  but  they  generally  belonged  to  the  warmer  months,  and  I  do  not 

know  that  any  extensive  series  of  comparisons  between  the  temperature  of 

the  ground  in  the  woods  and  the  fields  has  been  attempted  in  America. 

11 


162 


INFLUENCE    OS   FOKEST   ON   HUMIDITY. 


INFLUENCE  OF  FORESTS  ON  THE  HUMIDITY  OF  THE  AIR  AND 
THE  EARTH. 

a.   As  Inorganic  Matter. 

The  most  important  influence  of  tlie  forest  on  climate  is, 
no  doubt,  that  which  it  exercises  on  the  humidity  of  the  air 
and  the  earth,  and  this  climatic  action  it  exerts  partly  as  dead, 
partly  as  living  matter.  By  its  interposition  as  a  curtain  be 
tween  the  sky  and  the  ground,  it  intercepts  a  large  proportion 
of  the  dew  and  the  lighter  showers,  which  would  otherwise 

Dr.  Williams's  thermometer  was  sunk  to  the  depth  of  ten  inches,  and  gave 
the  following  results : 


TIME. 

Temperature 
of  ground  in 
pasture. 

Temperature 
of  ground  in 
woods. 

Difference. 

May      23.  .  . 

52 

46 

6 

"       28.  .  . 

57 

48 

9 

June     15.  .  . 

64 

51 

13 

"       27.  .  . 

62 

51 

11 

July      16.  .  . 

62 

51 

11 

"       30.  .  . 

65* 

55£ 

10 

Aug.     15.  .  . 

68 

58 

10 

"       31.  .  . 

59^ 

55 

4* 

Sept.    15.  .  . 

59i 

55 

4i 

Oct.        1.  .  . 

69£ 

55 

41 

"       15.  .  . 

49 

49 

0 

Nov.       1.  .  . 

43 

43 

0 

"       16.  .  . 

43* 

431 

0 

On  the  14th  of  January,  1791,  in  a  winter  remarkable  for  its  extreme 
severity,  he  found  the  ground,  on  a  plain  open  field  where  the  snow  had 
been  blown  away,  frozen  to  the  depth  of  three  feet  and  five  inches ;  in 
the  woods  where  the  snow  was  three  feet  deep,  and  where  the  soil  had 
frozen  to  the  depth  of  six  inches  before  the  snow  fell,  the  thermometer, 
at  six  inches  below  the  surface  of  the  ground,  stood  at  39°.  In  consequence 
of  the  covering  of  the  snow,  therefore,  the  previously  frozen  ground  had 
been  thawed  and  raised  to  seven  degrees  above  the  freezing  point. — "\ViL- 
LIAMS'S  Vermont,  i,  p.  74. 

Bodies  of  fresh  water,  so  large  as  not  to  be  sensibly  affected  by  local 
influences  of  narrow  reach  or  short  duration,  would  afford  climatic  indi 
cations  well  worthy  of  special  observation.  Lake  Champlain,  which  forms 
the  boundary  between  the  States  of  New  York  and  Vermont,  presents  very 
favorable  conditions  for  this  purpose.  This  lake,  which  drains  a  basin  of 
about  6,000  square  miles,  covers  an  area,  excluding  its  islands,  of  about  500 


INFLUENCE   OF  FOKEST   ON    HUMIDITY. 


163 


moisten  tlie  surface  of  the  soil,  and  restores  it  to  the  atmos 
phere  by  evaporation  ;  while  in  heavier  rains,  the  large  drops 
which  fall  upon  the  leaves  and  branches  are  broken  into 
smaller  ones,  and  consequently  strike  the  ground  with  less 
mechanical  force,  or  are  perhaps  even  dispersed  into  vapor 
without  reaching  it.*  As  a  screen,  it  prevents  the  access  of 

square  miles.  It  extends  from  lat.  43°  30'  to  45°  20',  in  very  nearly  a 
meridian  line,  has  a  mean  width  of  four  and  a  half  miles,  with  an  extreme 
breadth,  excluding  bays  almost  land-locked,  of  thirteen  miles.  Its  mean 
depth  is  not  well  known.  It  is,  however,  400  feet  deep  in  some  places, 
arid  from  100  to  200  in  many,  and  has  few  shoals  or  flats.  The  climate 
is  of  such  severity  that  it  rarely  fails  to  freeze  completely  over,  and  to  be 
safely  crossed  upon  the  ice,  with  heavy  teams,  for  several  weeks  every 
winter.  THOMPSON  (Vermont,  p.  14,  and  Appendix,  p.  9)  gives  the  follow 
ing  table  of  the  times  of  the  complete  closing  and  opening  of  the  ice, 
opposite  Burlington,  about  the  centre  of  the  lake,  and  where  it  is  ten 
miles  wide. 


Year. 

Closing. 

'    Days 
°?ema»-           closed. 

Year. 

Closing. 

Opening. 

Days 

closed. 

1816 
1817 

February  9 
January  29 

April  16 

78 

1836 

1837 

January  27 
January  15 

April  21 
April  26 

85 
101 

1818 
1819 

February  2 
March  4 

April  15 
April  17 

72 
44 

1838 
1839 

February  2 
January  25 

April  13 
April  6 

70 
71 

.1820 

(  February  3 
\  March  8 

February 
March  12 

1840 
1841 

January  25 
February  18 

February  20 
April  19 

26 
61 

1821 

January  15 

April  21 

95 

1842 

not  closed 

1822 

January  24 

March  30 

75 

1     1S43 

February  16 

April  22 

65 

1823 

February  7 

April  5 

57 

:     1844 

January  25 

April  11 

77 

1S24 
1825 

January  22 
February  9 

February  11 

20 

i     1S45 
:     1846 

February  3 
February  10 

March  26 
March  26 

51 
44 

1826 
1S27 

February  1 
January  21 

March  24 
March  31 

51 
68 

1847 
1843 

February  15 
February  13 

April  23 

February  26 

68 
13 

1828    1    not  closed 

1849 

February  7 

March  23 

44 

1829         January  31 

April 

1850 

not  closed 

1832 

February  6 

April  17 

70 

1851 

February  1 

March  12 

39 

1833 

February  2 

April  6 

63 

1852 

January  18 

April  19 

92 

1S34 

February  13 

February  20 

7 

•JOOK 

j  January  10 

January  23 

13 

looO 

j  February  7 

April  12 

64 

In  1847,  although,  at  the  point  indicated,  the  ice  broke  up  on  the  23d 
of  April,  it  remained  frozen  much  later  at  the  North,  and  steamers  were 
not  able  to  traverse  the  whole  length  of  the  lake  until  May  6th. 

*  We  are  not,  indeed,  to  suppose  that  condensation  of  vapor  and 
evaporation  of  water  are  going  on  in  the  same  stratum  of  air  at  the  same 
time,  or,  in  other  words,  that  vapor  is  condensed  into  raindrops,  and  rain 
drops  evaporated,  under  the  same  conditions ;  but  rain  formed  in  one 
stratum,  may  fall  through  another,  where  vapor  would  not  be  condensed. 
Two  saturated  strata  of  different  temperatures  may  be  brought  into  con- 


164  INFLUENCE   OF   FOREST   ON   HUMIDITY. 

the  sun's  rays  to  the  earth,  and,  of  course,  an  elevation  of  tem« 
perature  which  would  occasion  a  great  increase  of  evapora 
tion.  As  a  mechanical  obstruction,  it  impedes  the  passage  of 
air  currents  over  the  ground,  which,  as  is  well  knowii>  is  one 
of  the  most  efficient  agents  in  promoting  evaporation  and  the 
refrigeration  resulting  from  it.*  In  the  forest,  the  air  is  almost 
quiescent,  and  moves  only  as  local  changes  of  temperature 
affect  the  specific  gravity  of  its  particles.  Hence  there  is  often 
a  dead  calm  in  the  woods  when  a  furious  blast  is  raging  in  the 
open  country  at  a  few  yards'  distance.  The  denser  the  forest 
— as  for  example,  where  it  consists  of  spike-leaved  trees,  or  is 
thickly  intermixed  with  them — the  more  obvious  is  its  effect, 
and  no  one  can  have  passed  from  the  field  to  the  wood  in  cold, 
windy  weather,  without  having  remarked  it.f 

tact  in  the  higher  regions,  and  discharge  Large  raindrops,  which,  if  not 
divided  by  some  obstruction,  will  reach  the  ground,  though  passing  all 
the  time  through  strata  which  would  vaporize  them  if  they  were  in  a  state 
of  more  minute  division. 

*  It  is  perhaps  too  much  to  say  that  the  influence  of  trees  upon  the 
wind  is  strictly  limited  to  the  mechanical  resistance  of  their  trunks, 
branches,  and  foliage.  So  far  as  the  forest,  by  dead  or  by  living  action, 
raises  or  lowers  the  temperature  of  the  air  within  it,  so  far  it  creates 
upward  or  downward  currents  in  the  atmosphere  above  it,  and,  conse 
quently,  a  flow  of  air  toward  or  from  itself.  These  air  streams  have  a 
certain,  though  doubtless  a  very  small  influence  on  the  force  and  direction 
of  greater  atmospheric  movements. 

t  As  a  familiar  illustration  of  the  influence  of  the  forest  in  checking 
the  movement  of  winds,  I  may  mention  the  well-known  fact,  that  the  sen 
sible  cold  is  never  extreme  in  thick  woods,  where  the  motion  of  the  air  is" 
little  felt.  The  lumbermen  in  Canada  and  the  jSTorthern  United  States 
labor  in  the  woods,  without  inconvenience,  when  the  mercury  stands 
many  degrees  below  the  zero  of  Fahrenheit,  while  in  the  open  grounds, 
with  only  a  moderate  breeze,  the  same  temperature  is  almost  insupport 
able.  The  engineers  and  firemen  of  locomotives,  employed  on  railways 
running  through  forests  of  any  considerable  extent,  observe  that,  in  very 
cold  weather,  it  is  much  easier  to  keep  up  the  steam  while  the  engine  is 
passing  through  the  woods  than  in  the  open  ground.  As  soon  as  the  train 
emerges  from  the  shelter  of  the  trees  the  steam  gauge  falls,  and  the  stoker 
is  obliged  to  throw  in  a  liberal  supply  of  fuel  to  bring  it  up  again. 

Another  less  frequently  noticed  fact,  due,  no  doubt,  in  a  great  measure 


INFLUENCE   OF   FOKEST    ON   HUMIDITY.  165 

The  vegetable  mould,  resulting  from  the  decomposition  of 
leaves  and  of  wood,  carpets  the  ground  with  a  spongy  covering 
which  obstructs  the  evaporation  from  the  mineral  earth  below, 
drinks  up  the  rains  and  melting  snows  that  would  otherwise 

to  the  immobility  of  the  air,  is,  that  sounds  are  transmitted  to  incredible 
distances  in  the  unbroken  forest.  Many  instances  of  this  have  fallen  under 
iny  own  observation,  and  others,  yet  more  striking,  have  been  related  to 
me  by  credible  and  competent  witnesses  familiar  with  a  more  primitive 
condition  of  the  Anglo-American  world.  An  acute  observer  of  natural 
phenomena,  whose  childhood  and  youth  were  spent  in  the  interior  of  one 
of  the  newer  New  England  States,  has  often  told  me  that  when  he  estab 
lished  his  home  in  the  forest,  he  always  distinctly  heard,  in  still  weather, 
the  plash  of  horses'  feet,  when  they  forded  a  small  brook  nearly  seven- 
eighths  of  a  mile  from  his  house,  though  a  portion  of  the  wood  that  inter 
vened  consisted  of  a  ridge  seventy  or  eighty  feet  higher  than  either  tlie 
house  or  the  ford. 

I  have  no  doubt  that,  in  such  cases,  the  stillness  of  the  air  is  the  most 
important  element  in  the  extraordinary  transmissibility  of  sound ;  but  it 
must  be  admitted  that  the  absence  of  the  multiplied  and  confused  noises, 
which  accompany  human  industry  in  countries  thickly  peopled  by  man, 
contributes  to  the  same  result.  We  become,  by  habit,  almost  insensible  to 
the  familiar  and  never-resting  voices  of  civilization  in  cities  and  towns ; 
but  the  indistinguishable  drone,  which  sometimes  escapes  even  the  ear  of 
him  who  listens  for  it,  deadens  and  often  quite  obstructs  the  transmission 
of  sounds  which  would  otherwise  be  clearly  audible.  An  observer,  who 
wishes  to  appreciate  that  hum  of  civic  life  which  he  cannot  analyze,  will 
find  an  excellent  opportunity  by  placing  himself  on  the  hill  of  Capo  di 
Monte  at  Naples,  in  the  line  of  prolongation  of  the  street  called  Spac- 
canapoli. 

It  is  probably  to  the  stillness  of  which  I  have  spoken,  that  we  are  to 
ascribe  the  transmission  of  sound  to  great  distances  at  sea  in  calm  weather. 
In  June,  1853,  I  and  my  family  were  passengers  on  board  a  ship  of  war 
bound  up  the  jEgean.  On  the  evening  of  the  27th  of  that  month,  as  we 
were  discussing,  at  the  tea  table,  some  observations  of  Humboldt  on  this 
subject,  the  captain  of  the  ship  told  us  that  he  had  once  heard  a  single  gun 
at  sea  at  the  distance  of  ninety  nautical  miles.  The  next  morning,  though 
a  light  breeze  had  sprung  up  from  the  north,  the  sea  was  of  glassy  smooth 
ness  when  we  went  on  deck.  As  we  came  up,  an  officer  told  us  that  he 
had  heard  a  gun  at  sunrise,  and  the  conversation  of  the  previous  evening 
suggested  the  inquiry  whether  it  could  have  been  fired  from  the  combined 
French  and  English  fleet  then  lying  at  Beshika  Bay.  Upon  examination 
of  our  position  we  were  found  to  have  been,  at  sunrise,  ninety  sea  miles 


166  ABSORPTION    OF   MOISTURE   BY    TREES. 

flow  rapidly  over  the  surface  and  perhaps  be  conveyed  to  the 
distant  sea,  and  then  slowly  gives  out,  "by  evaporation,  infiltra 
tion,  and  percolation,  the  moisture  thus  imbibed.  The  roots, 
too,  penetrate  far  below  the  superficial  soil,  conduct  the  water 
along  their  surface  to  the  lower  depths  to  which  they  reach, 
and  thus  serve  to  drain  the  superior  strata  and  remove  th<? 
moisture  out  of  the  reach  of  evaporation. 


b.  The  Forest  as  Organic. 

These  are  the  principal  modes  in  which  the  humidity  of 
the  atmosphere  is  affected  by  the  forest  regarded  as  lifeless 
matter.  Let  us  inquire  how  its  organic  processes  act  upon 
this  meteorological  element. 

The  commonest  observation  shows  that  the  wood  and  bark 
of  living  trees  are  always  more  or  less  pervaded  with  watery 
and  other  fluids,  one  of  which,  the  sap,  is  very  abundant  in 
trees  of  deciduous  foliage  when  the  buds  begin  to  swell  and 
the  leaves  to  develop  themselves  in  the  spring.  The  outer 
bark  of  most  trees  is  of  a  corky  character,  not  admitting  the 
absorption  of  much  moisture  from  the  atmosphere  through  its 
pores,  and  we  can  hardly  suppose  that  the  buds  are  able  to 

from  that  point.  We  continued  beating  up  northward,  and  between  sun 
rise  and  twelve  o'clock  meridian  of  the  28th,  we  had  made  twelve  miles 
northing,  reducing  our  distance  from  Beshika  Bay  to  seventy-eight  sea 
miles.  At  noon  we  heard  several  guns  so  distinctly  that  we  were  able  to 
count  the  number.  On  the  29th  we  came  up  with  the  fleet,  and  learned 
from  an  officer  who  came  on  board  that  a  royal  salute  had  been  fired  at 
noon  on  the  28th,  in  honor  of  the  day  as  the  anniversary  of  the  Queen  of 
England's  coronation.  The  report  at  sunrise  was  evidently  the  morning 
gun,  those  at  noon  the  salute. 

Such  cases  are  rare,  because  the  sea  is  seldom  still,  and  the  KU/ZOTCOV 
dvfjpftnov  ye'Xnor/za  rarely  silent,  over  so  great  a  space  as  ninety  or  even 
seventy-eight  nautical  miles.  I  apply  the  epithet  silent  to  yeXaoyza  advi 
sedly.  I  am  convinced  that  ^Eschylus  meant  the  audible  laugh  of  the 
waves,  which  is  indeed  of  countless  multiplicity,  not  the  visible  smile  of 
the  sea,  which,  belonging  to  the  great  expanse  as  one  impersonation,  is  sin 
gle,  though,  like  the  human  smile,  made  up  of  the  play  of  many  features. 


ABSORPTION    OF   MOISTURE   BY   TREES.  167 

extract  from  the  air  a  much  larger  supply.  The  obvious  con 
clusion  as  to  the  source  from  which  the  extraordinary  quantity 
of  sap  at  this  season  is  derived,  is  that  to  which  scientific 
investigation  leads  us,  namely,  that  it  is  absorbed  from  the 
earth  by  the  roots,  and  thence  distributed  to  all  parts  of  the 
plant.  Popular  opinion,  indeed,  supposes  that  all  the  vege 
table  fluids,  during  the  entire  period  of  growth,  are  thus  drawn 
from  the  bosom  of  the  earth,  and  that  the  wood  and  other 
products  of  the  tree  are  wholly  formed  from  matter  held  in 
solution  in  the  water  abstracted  by  the  roots  from  the  ground. 
This  is  an  error,  for,  not  only  is  the  solid  matter  of  the  tree,  in 
a  certain  proportion  not  important  to  our  present  inquiry, 
received  from  the  atmosphere  in  a  gaseous  form,  through  the 
pores  of  the  leaves  and  of  the  young  shoots,  but  water  in  the 
state  of  vapor  is  absorbed  "and  contributed  to  the  circulation, 
by  the  same  organs.*  The  amount  of  water  taken  up  by  the 
roots,  however,  is  vastly  greater  than  that  imbibed  through  the 
leaves,  especially  at  the  season  when  the  juices  are  most  abun- 

*  "The  presence  of  watery  vapor  in  the  air  is  general.  *  *  *  Vege 
table  surfaces  are  endowed  with  the  power  of  absorbing  gases,  vapors, 
and  also,  no  doubt,  the  various  soluble  bodies  which  are  presented  to  them. 
The  inhalation  of  humidity  is  carried  on  by  the  leaves  upon  a  large  scale  ; 
the  dew  of  a  cold  summer  night  revives  the  groves  and  the  meadows,  and 
a  single  shower  of  rain  suffices  to  refresh  the  verdure  of  a  forest  which  a 
long  drought  had  parched." — SCIIACHT,  Les  Arbres,  ix,  p.  340. 

The  absorption  of  the  vapor  of  water  by  leaves  is  disputed.  "  The 
absorption  of  watery  vapor  by  the  leaves  of  plants  is,  according  to  Unger's 
experiments,  inadmissible."— WILHELM,  Der  Boden  und  das  Wasser,  p.  19. 
If  this  latter  view  is  correct,  the  apparently  refreshing  effects  of  atmos 
pheric  humidity  upon  vegetation  must  be  ascribed  to  moisture  absorbed  by 
the  ground  from  the  air  and  supplied  to  the  roots.  In  some  recent  experi 
ments  by  Dr.  Sachs,  a  porous  flower-pot,  with  a  plant  growing  in  it,  was 
left  unwatered  until  the  earth  was  dry,  and  the  plant  began  to  languish. 
The  pot  was  then  placed  in  a  glass  case  containing  air,  which  was  kept 
always  saturated  with  humidity,  but  no  water  was  supplied,  and  the  leaves 
of  the  plant  were  exposed  to  the  open  atmosphere.  The  soil  in  the  flower 
pot  absorbed  from  the  air  moisture  enough  to  revive  the  foliage,  and  keep 
it  a  long  time  green,  but  not  enough  to  promote  development  of  new  leaves. 
—Id.,  ibid.,  p.  18. 


168  MOSSES   AND   FUNGI. 

dant,  and  when,  as  we  have  seen,  the  leaves  are  yet  in  embryo. 
The  quantity  of  water  thus  received  from  the  air  and  the  earth, 
in  a  single  year,  by  a  wood  of  even  a  hundred  acres,  is  very 
great,  though  experiments  are  wanting  to  furnish  the  data  for 
even  an  approximate  estimate  of  its  measure ;  for  only  the 
vaguest  conclusions  can  be  drawn  from  the  observations  which 
have  been  made  on  the  imbibition  and  exhalation  of  water  by 
trees  and  other  plants  reared  in  artificial  conditions  diverse 
from  those  of  the  natural  forest.* 

Wood  Mosses  and  fungi. 

Besides  the  water  drawn  by  the  roots  from  the  earth  and 
the  vapor  absorbed  by  the  leaves  from  the  air,  the  wood 
mosses  and  fungi,  which  abound  in  all  dense  forests,  take  up 
a  great  quantity  of  moisture  from  the  atmosphere  when  it  is 
charged  with  humidity,  and  exhale  it  again  when  the  air  is 
dry.  These  humble  organizations,  which  play  a  more  import 
ant  part  in  regulating  the  humidity  of  the  air  than  writers  on 
the  forest  have  usually  assigned  to  them,  perish  with  the  trees 
they  grow  on  ;  but,  in  many  situations,  nature  provides  a  com 
pensation  for  the  tree  mosses  in  ground  species,  which,  on  cold 
soils,  especially  those  with  a  northern  exposure,  spring  up 
abundantly  both  before  the  woods  are  felled,  and  when  the 
land  is  cleared  and  employed  for  pasturage,  or  deserted. 
These  mosses  discharge  a  portion  of  the  functions  appropriated 
to  the  wood,  and  while  they  render  the  soil  of  improved  lands 
much  less  fit  for  agricultural  use,  they,  at  the  same  time,  pre 
pare  it  for  the  growth  of  a  new  harvest  of  trees,  when  the 
infertility  they  produce  shall  have  driven  man  to  abandon  it 
and  suffer  it  to  relapse  into  the  hands  of  nature. f 

*  The  experiments  of  Hales  and  others,  on  the  absorption  and  exhala 
tion  of  water  by  vegetables,  are  of  the  highest  physiological  interest ;  but 
observations  on  sunflowers,  cabbages,  hops,  and  single  branches  of  isolated 
trees,  growing  in  artificially  prepared  soils  and  under  artificial  conditions, 
furnish  no  trustworthy  data  for  computing  the  quantity  of  water  received 
and  given  off  by  the  natural  wood. 

+  In  the  primitive  forest,  except  where  the  soil  is  too  wet  for  the  dense 


SAP   OF   SUGAR  MAPLE.  1G9 

Flow  of  Sap. 

The  amount  of  sap  which  can  be  withdrawn  from  living 
trees  furnishes,  iiot  indeed  a  measure  of  the  quantity  of  water 
sucked  up  by  their  roots  from  the  ground — for  we  cannot 
extract  from  a  tree  its  whole  moisture — but  numerical  data 
which  may  aid  the  imagination  to  form  a  general  notion  of  the 
powerful  action  of  the  forest  as  an  absorbent  of  humidity  from 
the  earth. 

The  only  forest  tree  known  to  Europe  and  North  America, 
the  sap  of  which  is  largely  enough  applied  to  economical  uses 
to  have  made  the  amount  of  its  flow  a  matter  of  practical 
importance  and  popular  observation,  is  the  sugar  maple,  Acer 
saccharinum,  of  the  Anglo-American  Provinces  and  States. 
In  the  course  of  a  single  "sugar  season,"  which  lasts  ordinarily 
from  twenty-five  to  thirty  days,  a  sugar  maple  two  feet  in 
diameter  will  yield  not  less  than  twenty  gallons  of  sap,  and 
sometimes  much  more.*"  This,  however,  is  but  a  trifling  pro- 

growtli  of  trees,  the  ground  is  generally  too  thickly  covered  with  leaves 
to  allow  much  room  for  ground  mosses.  In  the  more  open  woods  of 
Europe,  this  form  of  vegetation  is  more  frequent — as,  indeed,  are  many 
other  small  plants  of  a  more  inviting  character — than  in  the  native  Ameri 
can  forest.  See,  on  the  cryptogams  and  wood  plants,  EOSSMASSLER,  Der 
Wald,  pp.  33  et  seqq. 

*  Emerson  (Trees  of  Massachusetts,  p.  493)  mentions  a  maple  six  feet 
in  diameter,  as  having  yielded  a  barrel,  or  thirty-one  and  a  half  gallons 
of  sap  in  twenty-four  hours,  and  another,  the  dimensions  of  which  are  not 
stated,  as  having  yielded  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  gallons  in  the  course 
of  the  season.  The  Cultivator,  an  American  agricultural  journal,  for  June, 
1842,  states  that  twenty  gallons  of  sap  were  drawn  in  eighteen  hours  from 
a  single  mnple,  two  and  a  half  feet  in  diameter,  in  the  town  of  Warner, 
New  Hampshire,  and  the  truth  of  this  account  has  been  verified  by  per 
sonal  inquiry  made  in  my  behalf.  This  tree  was  of  the  original  forest 
growth,  and  had  been  left  standing  when  the  ground  around  it  was  cleared. 
It  was  tapped  only  every  other  year,  and  then  with  six  or  eight  incisions. 
Dr.  Williams  (History  of  Vermont,  \,  p.  91)  says:  "A  man  much  em 
ployed  in  making  maple  sugar,  found  that,  for  twenty-one  days  together, 
a  maple  tree  discharged  seven  and  a  half  gallons  per  day." 

An  intelligent  correspondent,  of  much  experience  in  the  manufacture 


170  SAP    OF   SUGAR   MAPLE. 

portion  of  the  water  abstracted  from  the  earth  by  the  roots 
during  this  season,  when  the  yet  undeveloped  leaves  can  hardly 
absorb  an  appreciable  quantity  of  vapor  from  the  atmos 
phere  ;  *  for  all  this  fluid  runs  from  two  or  three  incisions  or 
auger  holes,  so  narrow  as  to  intercept  the  current  of  compara 
tively  few  sap  vessels,  and  besides,  experience  shows  that  large 
as  is  the  quantity  withdrawn  from  the  circulation,  it  is  rela 
tively  too  small  to  affect  very  sensibly  the  growth  of  the  tree.f 
The  number  of  large  maple  trees  on  an  acre  is  frequently  not 
less  than  fifty,  J  and  of  course  the  quantity  of  moisture  ab- 

of  maple  sugar,  writes  me  that  a  second-growth  maple,  of  about  two  feet 
in  diameter,  standing  in  open  ground,  tapped  with  four  incisions,  has,  for 
several  seasons,  generally  run  eight  gallons  per  day  in  fair  weather.  lie 
speaks  of  a  very  large  tree,  from  which  sixty  gallons  were  drawn  in  the 
course  of  a  season,  and  of  another,  something  more  than  three  feet  through, 
which  made  forty-two  pounds  of  wet  sugar,  and  must  have  yielded  not 
less  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  gallons. 

*  "  The  buds  of  the  maple,"  says  the  same  correspondent,  "  do  not  start 
till  toward  the  close  of  the  sugar  season.  As  soon  as  they  begin  to  swell, 
the  sap  seems  less  sweet,  and  the  sugar  made  from  it  is  of  a  darker  color, 
and  with  less  of  the  distinctive  maple  flavor." 

t  "  In  this  region,  maples  are  usually  tapped  with  a  three-quarter  inch 
bit,  boring  to  the  depth  of  one  and  a  half  or  two  inches.  In  the  smaller 
trees,  one  incision  only  is  made,  two  in  those  of  eighteen  inches  in  diame 
ter,  and  four  in  trees  of  larger  size.  Two  f-inch  holes  in  a  tree  twenty- 
two  inches  in  diameter  =  ^  of  the  circumference,  and  -j^-  of  the  area 
of  section." 

"Tapping  does  not  check  the  growth,  but  does  injure  the  quality  of 
the  wood  of  maples.  The  wood  of  trees  often  tapped  is  lighter  and  less 
dense  than  that  of  trees  which  have  not  been  tapped,  and  gives  less  heat 
in  burning.  No  difference  has  been  observed  in  the  starting  of  the  buds 
of  tapped  and  untapped  trees." — Same  correspondent. 

I  Dr.  Rush,  in  a  letter  to  Jefferson,  states  the  number  of  maples  fit 
for  tapping  on  an  acre  at  from  thirty  to  fifty.  "This,"  observes  my  cor 
respondent,  "  is  correct  with  regard  to  the  original  growth,  which  is  always 
more  or  less  intermixed  with  other  trees;  but  in  second  growth,  com 
posed  of  maples  alone,  the  number  greatly  exceeds  this.  I  have  had  the 
maples  on  a  quarter  of  an  acre,  which  I  thought  about  an  average  of 
second-growth  '  maple  orchards,'  counted.  The  number  was  found  to  be 
fifty-two,  of  which  thirty-two  were  ten  inches  or  more  in  diameter,  and, 
of  course,  large  enough  to  tap.  This  gives  two  hundred  and  eight  trees 


SAP    OF   TREES.  171 

str acted  from  the  soil  by  this  tree  alone  is  measured  by  thou 
sands  of  gallons  to  the  acre.  The  sugar  orchards,  as  they  are 
called,  contain  also  many  young  maples  too  small  for  tapping, 
and  numerous  other  trees — two  of  which,  at  least,  the  black 
birch,  Betula  lenta,  and  yellow  birch,  Beiula  excelsa,  both 
very  common  in  the  same  climate,  are  far  more  abundant  in 
sap  than  the  maple  * — are  scattered  among  the  sugar  trees ; 
for  the  North  American  native  forests  are  remarkable  for  the 
mixture  of  their  crops. 

The  sap  of  the  maple,  and  of  other  trees  with  deciduous 
leaves  which  grow  in  the  same  climate,  flows  most  freely  in 
the  early  spring,  and  especially  in  clear  weather,  when  the 
nights  are  frosty  and  the  days  -warm  ;  for  it  is  then  that  the 
melting  snows  supply  the  earth  with  moisture  in  the  justest 
proportion,  and  that  the  absorbent  power  of  the  roots  is  stimu 
lated  to  its  highest  activity,  f 

to  the  acre,  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  of  which  were  of  proper  size 
for  tapping." 

According  to  the  census  returns,  the  quantity  of  maple  sugar  made  in 
the  United  States  in  1850  was  84,253,4-36  pounds ;  in  18GO,  it  was  38,863,- 
884  pounds,  besides  1,944,594  gallons  of  molasses.  The  cane  sugar  made 
in  1850  amounted  to  237,133,000  pounds ;  in  1859,  to  302,205,000.— Pre 
liminary  Report  on  the  EigJtth  Census,  p.  88. 

According  to  Bigelow,  Les  Etats  Unis  d'Amerique  en  1863,  chap,  iv, 
the  sugar  product  of  Louisiana  alone  for  1862  is  estimated  at  528,321,500 
pounds. 

*  The  correspondent  already  referred  to  informs  me  that  a  black  birch, 
tapped  about  noon  with  two  incisions,  was  found  the  next  morning  to  have 
yielded  sixteen  gallons.  Dr.  Williams  (History  of  Vermont,  5,  p.  91)  says: 
"  A  large  birch,  tapped  in  the  spring,  ran  at  the  rate  of  five  gallons  an  hour 
when  first  tapped.  Eight  or  nine  days  after,  it  was  found  to  run  at  the 
-rate  of  about  two  and  a  half  gallons  an  hour,  and  at  the  end  of  fifteen 
days  the  discharge  continued  in  nearly  the  same  quantity.  The  sap  con 
tinued  to  flow  for  four  or  five  weeks,  and  it  was  the  opinion  of  the  ob 
servers  that  it  must  have  yielded  as  much  as  sixty  barrels  [1,890  gallons]." 

t  "  The  best  state  of  weather  for  a  good  run,"  says  my  correspondent, 
"  is  clear  days,  thawing  fast  in  the  daytime  and  freezing  well  at  night, 
with  a  gentle  west  or  northwest  wind  ;  though  we  sometimes  have  clear, 
fine,  thawing  days  followed  by  frosty  nights,  without  a  good  run  of  sap, 


172  ABSORPTION   BY   FOLIAGE. 

When  the  buds  are  ready  to  burst,  and  the  green  leaves 
begin  to  show  themselves  beneath  their  scaly  covering,  the 
ground  has  become  drier,  the  thirst  of  the  roots  is  quenched, 
and  the  flow  of  sap  from  them  to  the  stem  is  greatly  dimin 
ished.* 

Absorption  and  Exhalation  of  Moisture. 

The  leaves  now  commence  the  process  of  absorption,  and 
imbibe  both  uncombined  gases  and  an  unascertained  but  per 
haps  considerable  quantity  of  watery  vapor  from  the  humid 
atmosphere  of  spring  which  bathes  them. 

The  organic  action  of  the  tree,  as  thus  far  described,  tends 
to  the  desiccation  of  air  and  earth ;  but  when  we  consider 
what  volumes  of  water  are  daily  absorbed  by  a  large  tree,  and 
how  small  a  proportion  of  the  weight  of  this  fluid  consists  of 
matter  which  enters  into  new  combinations,  and  becomes  a 

I  have  thought  it  probable  that  the  irregular  flow  of  sap  on  different  days 
in  the  same  season  is  connected  with  the  variation  in  atmospheric  pressure ; 
for  the  atmospheric  conditions  above  mentioned  as  those  most  favorable 
to  a  free  flow  of  sap  are  also  those  in  which  the  barometer  usually  indi 
cates  pressure  considerably  above  the  mean.  With  a  south  or  southeast 
wind,  and  in  lowering  weather,  which  causes  a  fall  in  the  barometer,  the 
flow  generally  ceases,  though  the  sap  sometimes  runs  till  after  the  begin 
ning  of  the  storm.  With  a  gentle  wind,  south  of  west,  maples  sometimes 
run  all  night.  When  this  occurs,  it  is  oftenest  shortly  before  a  storm. 
Last  spring,  the  sap  of  a  sugar  orchard  in  a  neighboring  town  flowed  the 
greater  part  of  the  time  for  two  days  and  two  nights  successively,  and  did 
not  cease  till  after  the  commencement  of  a  rain  storm." 

The  cessation  of  the  flow  of  sap  at  night  is  perhaps  in  part  to  be  as 
cribed  to  the  nocturnal  frost,  which  checks  the  melting  of  the  snow,  of 
course  diminishing  the  supply  of  moisture  in  the  ground,  and  sometimes 
congeals  the  strata  from  which  the  rootlets  suck  in  water.  From  the  facts 
already  mentioned,  however,  and  from  other  well-known  circumstances — 
such,  for  example,  as  the  more  liberal  flow  of  sap  from  incisions  on  the 
south  side  of  the  trunk — it  is  evident  that  the  withdrawal  of  the  stimu 
lating  influences  of  the  sun's  light  and  heat  is  the  principal  cause  of  the 
suspension  of  the  circulation  in  the  night. 

*  "  The  flow  ceases  altogether  soon  after  the  buds  begin  to  swell." — 
Letter  "before  quoted. 


EXHALATION   OF   VAPOR   BY   TREES.  173 

part  of  the  solid  framework  of  the  vegetable,  or  a  component 
of  its  deciduous  products,  it  is  evident  that  the  superfluous 
moisture  must  somehow  be  carried  off  almost  as  rapidly  as  it 
flows  into  the  tree.*  At  the  very  commencement  of  vegeta- 

*  We  might  obtain  a  contribution  to  an  approximate  estimate  of  the 
quantity  of  moisture  abstracted  by  forest  vegetation  from  the  earth  and  the 
air,  by  ascertaining,  as  nearly  as  possible,  the  quantity  of  wood  on  a  given 
area,  the  proportion  of  assimilable  matter  contained  in  the  fluids  of  the 
tree  at  different  seasons  of  the  year,  the  ages  of  the  trees  respectively,  and 
the  quantity  of  leaf  and  seed  annually  shed  by  them.  The  results  would, 
indeed,  be  very  vague,  but  they  might  serve  to  cheek  or  confirm  estimates 
arrived  at  by  other  processes.  The  following  facts  are  items  too  loose 
perhaps  to  be  employed  as  elements  in  such  a  computation. 

Dr.  Williams,  who  wrote  when  the  woods  of  Northern  New  England 
were  generally  in  their  primitive  condition,  states  the  number  of  trees  grow 
ing  on  an  acre  at  from  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  six  hundred  and  fifty, 
according  to  their  size  and  the  quality  of  the  soil ;  the  quantity  of  wood, 
at  from  fifty  to  two  hundred  cords,  or  from  238  to  952  cubic  yards,  but 
adds  that  on  land  covered  with  pines,  the  quantity  of  wood  would  be  much 
greater.  Whether  he  means  to  give  the  entire  solid  contents  of  the  tree, 
or,  as  is  usual  in  ordinary  estimates  in  New  England,  the  marketable  wood 
only,  the  trunks  and  larger  branches,  does  not  appear.  Next  to  the  pine, 
the  maple  would  probably  yield  a  larger  amount  to  a  given  area  than  any 
of  the  other  trees  mentioned  by  Dr.  Williams,  but  mixed  wood,  in  general, 
measures  most.  In  a  good  deal  of  observation  on  this  subject,  the  largest 
quantity  of  marketable  wood  I  have  ever  known  cut  on  an  acre  of  .virgin 
forest  was  one  hundred  and  four  cords,  or  493  cubic  yards,  and  half  that 
amount  is  considered  a  very  fair  yield.  The  smaller  trees,  branches,  and 
twigs  would  not  increase  the  quantity  more  than  twenty-five  per  cent., 
and  if  we  add  as  much  more  for  the  roots,  we  should  have  a  total  of  about 
750  cubic  yards.  I  think  Dr.  Williams's  estimate  too  large,  though  it 
would  fall  much  below  the  product  of  the  great  trees  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  of  Oregon,  and  of  California.  It  should  be  observed  that  theso 
measurements  are  those  of  the  wood  as  it  lies  when  '  corded '  or  piled  up 
for  market,  and  exceed  the  real  solid  contents  by  not  less  than  fifteen  per 
cent. 

"  In  a  soil  of  medium  quality,"  says  Clave,  quoting  the  estimates  of 
Pfeil,  for  the  climate  of  Prussia,  "the  volume  of  a  hectare  of  pines  twenty 
years  old,  would  exceed  80  cubic  metres  [42^  cubic  yards  to  the  acre] ;  it 
would  amount  to  but  24  in  a  meagre  soil.  This  tree  attains  its  maximum 
of  mean  growth  at  the  age  of  seventy-five  years.  At  that  age,  in  the 
sandy  earth  of  Prussia,  it  produces  annually  about  5  cubic  metres,  with  a 


174:  EXHALATION   OF   VAPOK   BY   TREES. 

tion  in  spring,  some  of  this  fluid  certainly  escapes  through  the 
buds,  the  nascent  foliage,  and  the  pores  of  the  bark,  and  vege 
table  physiology  tells  us  that  there  is  a  current  of  sap  toward 
the  roots  as  well  as  from  them.*  I  do  not  know  that  the 
exudation  of  water  into  the  earth,  through  the  bark  or  at  the 
extremities  of  these  latter  organs,  has  been  directly  proved, 
but  the  other  known  modes  of  carrying  off  the  surplus  do  not 
seem  adequate  to  dispose  of  it  at  the  almost  leafless  period 
when  it  is  most  abundantly  received,  and  it  is  therefore  diffi 
cult  to  believe  that  the  roots  do  not,  to  some  extent,  drain  as 
well  as  flood  the  watercourses  of  their  stem.  Later  in  the  season 
the  roots  absorb  less,  and  the  now  developed  leaves  exhale  a 
vastly  increased  quantity  of  moisture  into  the  air.  In  any 
event,  all  the  water  derived  by  the  growing  tree  from  the 
atmosphere  and  the  ground  is  returned  again  by  transpiration 

total  volume  of  311  cubic  metres  per  hectare  [166  cubic  yards  per  acre]. 
After  this  age  the  volume  increases,  but  the  mean  rate  of  growth  dimin 
ishes.  At  eighty  years,  for  instance,  the  volume  is  335  cubic  metres,  the 
annual  production  4  only.  The  beech  reaches  its  maximum  of  annual 
growth  at  one  hundred  and  twenty  years.  It  then  has  a  total  volume  of 
633  cubic  metres  to  the  hectare  [835  cubic  yards  to  the  acre],  and  pro 
duces  5  cubic  metres  per  year."— CLAV&,  Etudes,  p.  151. 

These  measures,  I  believe,  include  the  entire  ligneous  product  of  the 
tree,  exclusive  of  the  roots,  and  express  the  actual  solid  contents.  The 
specific  gravity  of  maple  wood  is  stated  to  be  75.  Maple  sap  yields  sugar 
at  the  rate  of  about  one  pound  wet  sugar  to  three  gallons  of  sap,  and  wet 
sugar  is  to  dry  sugar  in  about  the  proportion  of  nineteen  to  sixteen.  Be 
sides  the  sugar,  there  is  a  small  residuum  of  "  sand,"  composed  of  phosphate 
of  lime,  with  a  little  silex,  and  it  is  certain  that  by  the  ordinary  hasty 
process  of  manufacture,  a  good  deal  of  sugar  is  lost ;  for  the  drops,  con 
densed  from  the  vapor  of  the  boilers  on  the  rafters  of  the  rude  sheds 
where  the  sap  is  boiled,  have  a  decidedly  sweet  taste. 

*  "  The  elaborated  sap,  passing  out  of  the  leaves,  is  received  into  the 
inner  bark,  *  *  *  and  a  part  of  what  descends  finds  its  way  even  to 
the  ends  of  the  roots,  and  is  all  along  diffused  laterally  into  the  stem, 
where  it  meets  and  mingles  with  the  ascending  crude  sap  or  raw  material. 
So  there  is  no  separate  circulation  of  the  two  kinds  of  sap  ;  and  no  crude 
sap  exists  separately  in  any  part  of  the  plant.  Even  in  the  root,  where  it 
enters,  this  mingles  at  once  with  some  elaborated  sap  already  there." — 
GEAY,  How  Plants  Grow,  §  2T3. 


REFRIGERATION   BY    EXHALATION.  175 

or  exudation,  after  having  surrendered  to  the  plant  the  small 
proportion  of  matter  required  for  vegetal  lie  growth  which  it 
held  in  solution  or  suspension.*  The  hygrometrical  equilib 
rium  is  then  restored,  so  far  as  this  :  the  tree  yields  up  again 
the  moisture  it  had  drawn  from  the  earth  and  the  air,  though 
it  does  not  return  it  each  to  each  ;  for  the  vapor  carried  off  by 
transpiration  greatly  exceeds  the  quantity  of  water  absorbed  by 
the  foliage  from  the  atmosphere,  and  the  amount,  if  any,  car 
ried  back  to  the  ground  by  the  roots. 

The  evaporation  of  the  juices  of  the  plant,  by  whatever 
process  effected,  takes  up  atmospheric  heat  and  produces  re 
frigeration.  This  effect  is  not  less  real,  though  much  less 
sensible,  in  the  forest  than  in  meadow  or  pasture  land,  and  it 
cannot  be  doubted  that  the  local  temperature  is  considerably 
affected  by  it.  But  the  evaporation  that  cools  the  air  diffuses 
through  it,  at  the  same  time,  a  medium  which,  powerfully 
resists  the  escape  of  heat  from  the  earth  by  radiation.  Visible 
vapors  or  clouds,  it  is  well  known,  prevent  frosts  by  obstruct- 

*  Ward's  tight  glazed  cases  for  raising,  and  especially  for  transporting 
plants,  go  far  to  prove  that  water  only  circulates  through  vegetables,  and 
is  again  and  again  absorbed  and  transpired  by  organs  appropriated  to  these 
functions.  Seeds,  growing  grasses,  shrubs,  or  trees  planted  in  proper  earth, 
moderately  watered  and  covered  with  a  glass  bell  or  close  frame  of  glass, 
live  for  months  and  even  years,  with  only  the  original  store  of  air  and 
water.  In  one  of  Ward's  early  experiments,  a  spire  of  grass  and  a  fern, 
which  sprang  up  in  a  corked  bottle  containing  a  little  moist  earth  intro 
duced  as  a  bed  for  a  snail,  lived  and  flourished  for  eighteen  years  without 
a  new  supply  of  either  fluid.  In  these  boxes  the  plants  grow  till  the  en 
closed  air  is  exhausted  of  the  gaseous  constituents  of  vegetation,  and  till 
the  water  has  yielded  up  the  assimilable  matter  it  held  in  solution,  and  dis 
solved  and  supplied  to  the  roots  the  nutriment  contained  in  the  earth  in 
which  they  are  planted.  After  this,  they  continue  for  a  long  time  in  a 
state  of  vegetable  sleep,  but  if  fresh  air  and  water  be  introduced  into  tho 
cases,  or  the  plants  be  transplanted  into  open  ground,  they  rouse  them 
selves  to  renewed  life,  and  grow  vigorously,  without  appearing  to  have  suf 
fered  from  their  long  imprisonment.  The  water  transpired  by  the  leaves 
is  partly  absorbed  by  the  earth  directly  from  the  air,  partly  condensed  on 
the  glass,  along  which  it  trickles  down  to  the  earth,  enters  the  roots  again, 
and  thus  continually  repeats  the  circuit.  See  Aus  der  Nalur,  21,  B.  S.  587. 


176  CONDENSATION   OF   ABSORBED    VAPOR. 

ing  radiation,  or  rather  by  reflecting  back  again  the  heat 
radiated  by  the  earth,  just  as  any  mechanical  screen  would 
do.  On  the  other  hand,  clouds  intercept  the  rays  of  the  sun 
also,  and  hinder  its  heat  from  reaching  the  earth.  The  invis 
ible  vapors  given  out  by  leaves  impede  the  passage  of  heat 
reflected  and  radiated  by  the  earth  and  by  all  terrestrial 
objects,  but  oppose  much  less  resistance  to  the  transmission  of 
direct  solar  heat,  and  indeed  the  beams  of  the  sun  seem  mora 
scorching  when  received  through  clear  air  charged  with  uncon- 
densed  moisture  than  after  passing  through  a  dry  atmosphere. 
Hence  the  reduction  of  temperature  by  the  evaporation  of 
moisture  from  vegetation,  though  sensible,  is  less  than  it  would 
be  if  water  in  the  gaseous  state  were  as  impervious  to  heat  given 
out  by  the  sun  as  to  that  emitted  by  terrestrial  objects. 

The  hygroscopicity  of  vegetable  mould  is  much  greater  than 
that  of  any  mineral  earth,  and  therefore  the  soil  of  the  forest 
absorbs  more  atmospheric  moisture  than  the  open  ground.  The 
condensation  of  the  vapor  by  absorption  disengages  heat,  and 
consequently  raises  the  temperature  of  the  soil  which  absorbs 
it.  Yon  Babo  found  the  temperature  of  sandy  earth  thus 
elevated  from  20°  to  27°  centigrade,  making  a  difference  of 
nearly  thirteen  degrees  of  Fahrenheit,  and  that  of  soil  rich 
in  humus  from  20°  to  31°  centigrade,  a  difference  of  almost 
twenty  degrees  of  Fahrenheit.* 

Balance  of  Conflicting  Influences. 

"We  have  shown  that  the  forest,  considered  as  dead  matter, 
tends  to  diminish  the  moisture  of  the  air,  by  preventing  the 
sun's  rays  from  reaching  the  ground  and  evaporating  the 

*  WILHELM,  Der  Boden  und  das  Wet-seer,  p.  18.  It  is  not  ascertained  in 
what  proportions  the  dew  is  evaporated,  and  in  what  it  is  absorbed  by  the 
earth,  in  actual  nature,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  amount  of  water 
taken  up  by  the  ground,  both  from  vapor  suspended  in  the  air  and  from 
dew,  is  large.  The  annual  fall  of  dew  in  England  is  estimated  at  five 
inches,  but  this  quantity  is  much  exceeded  in  many  countries  with  a 
clearer  sky.  "  In  many  of  our  Algerian  campaigns,"  says  Babinet,  "when 


CONFLICTING   INFLUENCES.  177 

water  that  falls  upon  the  surface,  and  also  by  spreading  over 
the  earth  a  spongy  mantle  which  sucks  up  and  retains  the 
humidity  it  receives  from  the  atmosphere,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  this  covering  acts  in  the  contrary  direction  by  accumu 
lating,  in  a  reservoir  not  wholly  inaccessible  to  vaporizing 
influences,  the  water  of  precipitation  which  might  otherwise 
suddenly  sink  deep  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  or  flow  by 
superficial  channels  to  other  climatic  regions.  We  now  see 
that,  as  a  living  organism,  it  tends,  on  the  one  hand,  to  dimin 
ish  the  humidity  of  the  air  by  absorbing  moisture  from  it,  and, 
on  the  other,  to  increase  that  humidity  by  pouring  out  into  the 
atmosphere,  in  a  vaporous  form,  the  water  it  draws  up  through 
its  roots.  This  last  operation,  at  the  same  time,  lowers  the 
temperature  of  the  air  in  contact  with  or  proximity  to  the 
wood,  by  the  same  law  as  in  other  cases  of  the  conversion  of 
water  into  vapor. 

As  I  have  repeatedly  said,  we  cannot  measure  the  value  of 
any  one  of  these  elements  of  climatic  disturbance,  raising  or 
lowering  of  temperature,  increase  or  diminution  of  humidity, 
nor  can  we  say  that  in  any  one  season,  any  one  year,  or  any 
one  fixed  cycle,  however  long  or  short,  they  balance  and  com 
pensate  each  other.  They  are  sometimes,  but  certainly  not 
always,  contemporaneous  in  their  action,  whether  their  tend 
ency  is  in  the  same  or  in  opposite  directions,  and,  therefore, 
their  influence  is  sometimes  cumulative,  sometimes  conflicting  ; 
but,  upon  the  whole,  their  general  eftect  seems  to  be  to  miti 
gate  extremes  of  atmospheric  heat  and  cold,  moisture  and 
drought.  They  serve  as  equalizers  of  temperature  and  hu 
midity,  and  it  is  highly  probable  that,  in  analogy  with  most 
other  works  and  workings  of  nature,  they,  at  certain  or  uncer 
tain  periods,  restore  the  equilibrium  which,  whether  as  lifeless 
masses  or  as  living  organisms,  they  may  have  temporarily 
disturbed. 

it  was  wished  to  punish  the  brigandage  of  the  unsubdued  tribes,  it  was  im 
possible  to  set  their  grain  fields  on  fire  until  a  late  hour  of  the  day;  for 
the  plants  were  so  wet  with  the  night  dew  that  it  was  necessary  to  wait 
until  the  sun  had  dried  them." — fitudcs  et  Lectures,  ii,  p.  212. 
12 


ITS  INFLUENCE    ON    PRECIPITATION. 

When,  therefore,  man  destroyed  these  natural  harmonizers 
of  climatic  discords,  he  sacrificed  an  important  conservative 
power,  though  it  is  far  from  certain  that  he  has  thereby 
affected  the  mean,  however  much  he  may  have  exaggerated 
the  extremes  of  atmospheric  temperature  and  humidity,  or,  in 
other  words,  may  have  increased  the  range  and  lengthened  the 
scale  of  thermometric  and  hygrometric  variation. 

Influence  of  the  Forest  on  Temperature  and  Precipitation. 

Aside  from  the  question  of  compensation,  it  does  not  seem 
probable  that  the  forests  sensibly  affect  the  total  quantity  of 
precipitation,  or  the  general  mean  of  atmospheric  temperature 
of  the  globe,  or  even  that  they  had  this  influence  when  their 

fxtent  was  vastly  greater  than  at  present.  The  waters  cover 
bout  three  fourths  of  the  face  of  the  earth,*  and  if  we  deduct 
be  frozen  zones,  the  peaks  and  crests  of  lofty  mountains  and 

*  "  It  has  been  concluded  that  the  dry  land  occupies  about  49,800,000 
square  statute  miles.  This  does  not  include  the  recently  discovered  tracts 
of  land  in  the  vicinity  of  the  poles,  and  allowing  for  yet  undiscovered  land 
(which,  however,  can  only  exist  in  small  quantity),  if  we  assign  51,000,000 
to  the  land,  there  will  remain  about  146,000,000  of  square  miles  for  the 
extent  of  surface  occupied  by  the  ocean." — Sir  J.  F.  "W.  HERSCIIEL,  PJiysical 
Geography,  1861,  p.  19. 

It  docs  not  appear  to  which  category  Herschel  assigns  the  inland  seas 
and  the  fresh- water  lakes  and  rivers  of  the  earth  ;  and  Mrs.  Somerville, 
who  states  that  the  "  dry  land  occupies  an  area  of  88,000,000  of  square 
miles,'1  and  that  uthe  ocean  covers  nearly  three  fourths  of  the  surface  of 
the  globe,"  is  equally  silent  on  this  point. — Physical  Geography,  fifth 
edition,  p.  30.  On  the  following  page,  Mrs.  Somerville,  in  a  note,  cites 
Mr.  Gardner  as  her  authority,  and  says  that,  "according  to  his  com 
putation,  the  extent  of  land  is  about  37,673,000  square  British  miles,  inde 
pendently  of  Victoria  Continent ;  and  the  sea  occupies  110,849,000.  Hence 
the  land  is  to  the  sea  as  1  to  4  nearly."  Sir  John  F.  W.  Herschel  makes 
the  area  of  dryland  and  ocean  together  197,000,000  square  miles;  Mrs. 
Somerville,  or  rather  Mr.  Gardner,  148,522,000.  I  suppose  Sir  John 
Herschel  includes  the  islands  in  his  aggregate  of  the  "  dry  land,"  and  the 
inland  waters  under  the  general  designation  of  the  "  ocean,"  and  that  Mrs. 
Somerville  excludes  both. 


INFLUENCE   ON   PKECIPITATION — GENERAL   RESULT.  179 

their  craggy  slopes,  the  Sahara  and  other  great  African  and 
Asiatic  deserts,  and  all  such  other  portions  of  the  solid  surface 
as  are  permanently  unfit  for  the  growth  of  wood,  we  shall  find 
that  probably  not  one  tenth  of  the  total  superficies  of  our 
planet  was  ever,  at  any  one  time  in  the  present  geological 
epoch,  covered  with  forests.  Besides  this,  the  distribution  of 
forest  land,  of  desert,  and  of  water,  is  such  as  to  reduce  the 
possible  influence  of  the  former  to  a  low  expression ;  for  the 
forests  are,  in  large  proportion,  situated  in  cold  or  temperate 
climates,  where  the  action  of  the  sun  is  comparatively  feeble 
both  in  elevating  temperature  and  in  promoting  evaporation  ; 
while,  in  the  torrid  zone,  the  desert  and  the  sea — the  latter  of 
which  always  presents  an  evaporable  surface — enormously  pre 
ponderate.  It  is,  upon  the  whole,  not  probable  that  so  small 
an  extent  of  forest,  so  situated,  could  produce  an  appreciable 
influence  on  the  general  climate  of  the  globe,  though  it  might 
appreciably  affect  the  local  action  of  all  climatic  elements. 
The  total  annual  amount  of  solar- heat  absorbed  and  radiated 
by  the  earth,  and  the  sum  of  terrestrial  evaporation  and  atmos 
pheric  precipitation  must  be  supposed  constant ;  but  the  distri 
bution  of  heat  and  of  humidity  is  exposed  to  disturbance  in 
both  time  and  place,  by  a  multitude  of  local  causes,  among 
which  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  forest  is  doubtless  one. 

So  far  as  we  are  able  to  sum  up  the  general  results,  it  would 
appear  that,  in  countries  in  the  temperate  zone  still  chiefly 
covered  with  wood,  the  summers  would  be  cooler,  moister, 
shorter,  the  winters  milder,  drier,  longer,  than  in  the  same 
regions  after  the  removal  of  the  forest.  The  slender  historical 
evidence  we  possess  seems  to  point  to  the  same  conclusion, 
though  there  is  some  conflict  of  testimony  and  of  opinion  on 
this  point,  and  some  apparently  well-established  exceptions  to 
particular  branches  of  what  appears  to  be  the  general  law. 

One  of  these  occurs  both  in  climates  where  the  cold  of 
winter  is  severe  enough  to  freeze  the  ground  to  a  considerable 
depth,  as  in  Sweden  and  the  Northern  States  of  the  American 
Union,  and  in  milder  zones,  where  the  face  of  the  earth  is 
exposed  to  cold  mountain  winds,  as  in  some  parts  of  Italy  and 


180  WINTER   IN   COLD   CLIMATES. 

of  France ;  for  there,  as  we  have  seen,  the  winter  is  believed 
to  extend  itself  into  the  months  which  belong  to  the  spring, 
later  than  at  periods  when  the  forest  covered  the  greater  part 
of  the  ground.*  More  causes  than  one  doubtless  contribute  to 
this  result ;  but  in  the  case  of  Sweden  and  the  United  States, 
the  most  obvious  explanation  of  the  fact  is  to  be  found  in  the 
loss  of  the  shelter  afforded  to  the  ground  by  the  thick  coating 
of  leaves  which  the  forest  sheds  upon  it,  and  the  snow  which 
the  woods  protect  from  blowing  away,  or  from  melting  in  the 
i  brief  thaws  of  winter.  I  have  already  remarked  that  bare 
ground  freezes  much  deeper  than  that  which,  is  covered  by 
beds  of  leaves,  and  when  the  earth  is  thickly  coated  with 
snow,  the  strata  frozen  before  it  fell  begin  to  thaw.  It  is  not 
uncommon  to  find  the  ground  in  the  woods,  where  the  snow 
lies  two  or  three  feet  deep,  entirely  free  from  frost,  when  the 
atmospheric  temperature  has  been  for  several  weeks  below  the 
freezing  point,  and  for  some  days  even  below  the  zero  of  Fahr 
enheit.  When  the  ground  is -cleared  and  brought  under  culti 
vation,  the  leaves  are  ploughed  into  the  soil  and  decomposed, 
and  the  snow,  especially  upon  knolls  and  eminences,  is  blown 

*  It  has  been  observed  in  Sweden  that  the  spring,  in  many  districts 
where  the  forests  have  been  cleared  off,  now  comes  on  a  fortnight  later 
than  in  the  last  century. — ASBJOENSEX,  Om  Skorene  i  Novge,  p.  101. 

The  conclusion  arrived  at  by  Noah  Webster,  in  his  very  learned  and 
able  paper  on  the  supposed  change  in  the  temperature  of  winter,  read  be 
fore  the  Connecticut  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  in  1799,  was  as  fol 
lows:  "From  a  careful  comparison  of  these  facts,  it  appears  that  the 
weather,  in  modern  winters,  in  the  United  States,  is  more  inconstant  than 
when  the  earth  was  covered  with  woods,  at  the  first  settlement  of  Euro 
peans  in  the  country  ;  that  the  warm  weather  of  autumn  extends  further 
into  the  winter  months,  and  the  cold  weather  of  winter  and  spring  en 
croaches  upon  the  summer ;  that,  the  wind  being  more  variable,  snow  is 
less  permanent,  an:l  perhaps  the  same  remark  may  be  applicable  to  the  ice 
of  the  rivers.  These  effects  seem  to  result  necessarily  from  the  greater 
quantity  of  heat  accumulated  in  the  earth  in  summer  since  the  ground 
has  been  cleared  of  wood  and  exposed  to  the  rays  of  the  sun,  and  to  the 
greater  depth  of  frost  in  the  earth  in  winter  by  the  exposure  of  its  un 
covered  surface  to  the  cold  atmosphere." — Collection  of  Papers  ly 
WEBSTEK,  p.  162. 


INFLUENCE    OF    WOODS    ON    PKKCIPITATJON.  181 

off,  or  perhaps  half  thawed,  several  times  during  the  winter. 
The  water  from  the  melting  snow  runs  into  the  depressions, 
and  when,  "after  a  day  or  two  of  warm  sunshine  or  tepid  rain, 
the  cold  returns,  it  is  consolidated  to  ice,  and  the  bared  ridges 
and  swells  of  earth  are  deeply  frozen.*  It  requires  many  days 
of  mild  weather  to  raise  the  temperature  of  soil  in  this  condi 
tion,  and  of  the  air  in  contact  with  it,  to  that  of  the  earth  in 
the  forests  of  the  same  climatic  region.  Flora  is  already  plait 
ing  her  sylvan  wreath  before  the  corn  flowers  which  are  to 
deck  the  garland  of  Ceres  have  waked  from  their  winter's 
sleep  ;  and  it  is  not  a  popular  error  to  believe  that,  where 
man  has  substituted  his  artificial  crops  for  the  spontaneous 
harvest  of  nature,  spring  delays  her  coining. 

In  many  cases,  the  apparent  change  in  the  period  of  the 
seasons  is  a  purely  local  phenomenon,  which  is  probably  com 
pensated  by  a  higher  temperature  in  other  months,  without 
any  real  disturbance  of  the  average  thermometrical  equilib 
rium.  We  may  easily  suppose  that  there  are  analogous  par 
tial  deviations  from  the  general  law  of  precipitation ;  and, 
without  insisting  that  the  removal  of  the  forest  has  diminished 
the  sum  total  of  snow  and  rain,  we  may  well  admit  that  it  has 
lessened  the  quantity  which  annually  Mis  within  particular 
limits.  Various  theoretical  considerations  make  this  probable, 
the  most  obvious  argument,  perhaps,  being  that  drawn  from 
the  generally  admitted  fact,  that  the  summer  and  even  the 
mean  temperature  of  the  forest  is  below  that  of  the  open  coun 
try  in  the  same  latitude.  If  the  air  in  a  wood  is  cooler  than 
that  around  it,  it  must  reduce  the  temperature  of  the  atmos 
pheric  stratum  immediately  above  it,  and,  of  course,  whenever 
a  saturated  current  sweeps  over  it,  it  must  produce  precipita 
tion  which  would  fall  upon  or  near  it. 

But  the  subject  is  so  exceedingly  complex  and  difficult, 

*  I  have  seen,  in  Northern  New  England,  the  surface  of  the  open 
ground  frozen  to  the  depth  of  twenty-two  inches,  in  the  month  of  Novem 
ber,  when  in  the  forest  earth  no  frost  was  discoverable ;  and  later  in  the 
winter,  I  have  known  an  exposed  sand  knoll  to  remain  frozen  six  feet 
deep,  after  the  ground  in  the  woods  was  completely  thawed. 


182  INUNDATIONS. 

that  it  is  safer  to  regard  it  as  a  historical  problem,  or  at  least 
as  what  lawyers  call  a  mixed  question  of  law  and  fact,  than  to 
attempt  to  decide  it  upon  d  priori  grounds.  Unfortunately  the 
evidence  is  conflicting  in  tendency,  and  sometimes  equivocal  in 
interpretation,  but  I  believe  that  a  majority  of  the  foresters 
,and  physicists  who  have  studied  the  question  are  of  opinion 
that  in  many,  if  not  in  all  cases,  the  destruction  of  the  woods 
has  been  followed  by  a  diminution  in  the  annual  quantity  of 
rain  and  dew.  Indeed,  it  has  long  been  a  popularly  settled 
belief  that  vegetation  and  the  condensation  and  fall  of  atmos 
pheric  moisture  are  reciprocally  necessary  to  each  other,  and 
even  the  poets  sing  of 

Afric's  barren  sand, 

Where  nought  can  grow,  because  it  raineth  not, 
And  where  no  rain  can  fall  to  bless  the  land, 
Because  nought  grows  there.* 

Before  stating,  the  evidence  on  the  general  question  and 
citing  the  judgments  of  the  learned  upon  it,  however,  it  is  well 
to  remark  that  the  comparative  variety  or  frequency  of  inun 
dations  in  earlier  and  later  centuries  is  not  necessarily,  in  most 
cases  not  probably,  entitled  to  any  weight  whatever,  as  a  proof 
that  more  or  less  rain  fell  formerly  than  now;  because  the 
accumulation  of  water  in  the  channel  of  a  river  depends  far 
less  upon  the  quantity  of  precipitation  in  its  valley,  than  upon 
the  rapidity  with  which  it  is  conducted,  on  or  under  the  sur 
face  of  the  ground,  to  the  central  artery  that  drains  the  basin. 
But  this  point  will  be  more  fully  discussed  in  a  subsequent 
chapter. 

There  is  another  important  observation  which  may  prop 
erly  be  introduced  here.  It  is  not  universally,  or  even  gener 
ally  true,  that  the  atmosphere  returns  its  humidity  to  the  local 

*  Det  golde  Strug  i  Afrika, 

Der  Intet  voxe  kan,  da  ei  det  regner, 
Og,  omvendt,  ingen  Regn  kan  falde,  da 
Der  Intet  voxer. 

PALUDAN-MULLEE,  Adam  Homo,  ii,  408. 


MOVEMENT   OF    HUMID   AIK.  183 

source  from  which,  it  receives  it.     The  air  is  constantly  in 

motion, 

howling  tempests  scour  amain 

From  sea  to  land,  from  land  to  sea  ;  * 

and,  therefore,  it  is  always  probable  that  the  evaporation 
drawn  up  by  the  atmosphere  from  a  given  rivfer,  or  sea,  or 
forest,  or  meadow,  will  be  discharged  by  precipitation,  not  at 
or  near  the  point  where  it  rose,  but  at  a  distance  of  miles, 
leagues,  or  even  degrees.  The  currents  of  the  upper  air  are 
invisible,  and  they  leave  behind  them  no  landmark  to  record 
their  track.  We  know  not  whence  they  come,  or  whither 
they  go.  We  have  a  certain  rapidly  increasing  acquaintance 
with  the  laws  of  general  atmospheric  motion,  but  of  the  origin 
and  limits,  the  beginning  and  end  of  that  motion,  as  it  mani 
fests  itself  at  any  particular  time  and  place,  we  know  nothing. 
We  cannot  say  where  or  when  the  vapor,  exhaled  to-day  from 
the  lake  on  which  we  float,  will  be  condensed  and  fall ; 
whether  it  will  waste  itself  on  a  barren  desert,  refresh  upland 
pastures,  descend  in  snow  on  Alpine  heights,  or  contribute  to 
swell  a  distant  torrent  which  shall  lay  waste  square  miles  of 
fertile  corn  land ;  nor  do  we  know  whether  the  rain  which 
feeds  our  brooklets  is  due  to  the  transpiration  from  a  neigh 
boring  forest,  or  to  the  evaporation  from  a  far-off  sea.  If, 
therefore,  it  were  proved  that  the  annual  quantity  of  rain  and 
dew  is  now  as  great  on  the  plains  of  Castile,  for  example,  as  it 
was  when  they  were  covered  with  the  native  forest,  it  would 
by  no  means  follow  that  those  woods  did  not  augment  the 
amount  of  precipitation  elsewhere. 

But  I  return  to  the  question.  Beginning  with  the  latest 
authorities,  I  cite  a  passage  from  Clave,  f  After  arguing  that 
we  cann'ot  reason  from  the  climatic  effects  of  the  forest  in  trop 
ical  and  sub-tropical  countries  as  to  its  influence  in  temperate 

*  Und  Stiirme  brausen  um  die  "Wette 
Yom  Meer  aufs  Land,  vom  Land  aufs  Meer. 

GOETHE,  Faust,  Song  of  ihe  Archangel*. 

t  fitudes  sur  Vficonomie  Forestiere,  pp.  45,  46. 


184:  INFLUENCE   OF   WOODS    ON    PRECIPITATION". 

latitudes,  tlie  author  proceeds  :  "  The  action  of  the  forests  on 
rain,  a  consequence  of  that  -which  they  exercise  on  tempera 
ture,  is  difficult  to  estimate  in  our  climate,  but  is  very  pro 
nounced  in  hot  countries,  and  is  established  by  numerous 
examples.  M.  Boussingault  states  that  in  the  region  com 
prised  between  the  Bay  of  Cupica  and  the  Gulf  of  Guayaquil, 
which  is  covered  with  immense  forests,  the  rains  are  almost 
continual,  and  that  the  mean  temperature  of  this  humid  country 
rises  hardly  to  twenty-six  degrees  (=  80°  Fahr.).  M.  Blanqui, 
in  his  ;  Travels  in  Bulgaria,'  informs  us  that  at  Malta  rain  has 
become  so  rare,  since  the  woods  were  cleared  to  make  room 
for  the  growth  of  cotton,  that  at  the  time  of  his  visit  in  Octo 
ber,  1841,  not  a  drop  of  rain  had  fallen  for  three  years.*  The 
terrible  droughts  which  desolate  the  Cape  Yerd  Islands  must 
also  be  attributed  to  the  destruction  of  the  forests.  In  the 
Island  of  St.  Helena,  where  the  wooded  surface  has  consid 
erably  extended  within  a  few  years,  it  has  been  observed  that 
the  rain  has  increased  in  the  same  proportion.  It  is  now  in 
quantity  double  what  it  was  during  the  residence  of  Napoleon. 
In  Egypt,  recent  plantations  have  caused  rains,  which  hitherto 
were  almost  unknown." 

Schacht  observes  :  "  In  wooded  countries,  the  atmosphere 
is  generally  humid,  and  rain  and  dew  fertilize  the  soil.  As 
the  lightning  rod  abstracts  the  electric  fluid  from  the  stormy 
sky,  so  the  forest  attracts  to  itself  the  rain  from  the  clouds, 
which,  in  falling,  refreshes  not  it  alone,  but  extends  its  benefits 

*  1  am  not  aware  of  any  evidence  to  show  that  Malta  had  any  woods 
of  importance  at  any  time  since  the  cultivation  of  cotton  was  introduced 
there  ;  and  if  it  is  true,  as  has  been  often  asserted,  that  its  present  soil  was 
imported  from  Sicily,  it  can  certainly  have  possessed  no  forests  since  a  very 
remote  period.  In  Sandys's  time,  1611,  there  were  no  woods  in  the  island, 
and  it  produced  little  cotton.  He  describes  it  as  "a  country  altogether 
champion,  being  no  other  than  a  rocke  couered  oner  with  earth,  but  two 
feete  deepe  where  the  deepest ;  hauing  but  few  trees  but  such  as  beare 
fruite.  *  *  *  So  that  their  wood  they  haue  from  Sicilia."  They  have 
"  an  indifferent  quantity  of  cotton  wooll,  but  that  the  best  of  all  other." — • 
SANDYS,  Travels,  p.  228. 

t  SCHACHT,  Les  Arbrcs,  p.  412. 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOREST   ON   PEECIPITATION.  185 

to  the  neighboring  fields.  *  *  The  forest,  presenting  a  con 
siderable  surface  for  evaporation,  gives  to  its  own  soil  and  to 
all  the  adjacent  ground  an  abundant  and  enlivening  dew. 
There  falls,  it  is  true,  less  dew  on  a  tall  and  thick  wood  than 
on  the  surrounding  meadows,  which,  being  more  highly 
heated  during  the  day  by  the  influence  of  insolation,  cool  with 
greater  rapidity  by  radiation.  But  it  must  be  remarked,  that 
this  increased  deposition  of  dew  on  the  neighboring  fields  is 
partly  due  to  the  forests  themselves ;  for  the  dense,  saturated 
strata  of  air  which  hover  over  the  woods  descend  in  cool,  calm 
evenings,  like  clouds,  to  the  valley,  and  in  the  morning,  beads 
of  dew  sparkle  on  the  leaves  of  the  grass  and  the  flowers  of  the 
field.  Forests,  in  a  word,  exert,  in  the  interior  of  continents, 
an  influence  like  that  of  the  sea  on  the  climate  of  islands  and 
of  coasts  :  both  water  the  soil  and  thereby  insure  its  fertility." 
In  a  note  upon  this  passage,  quoting  as  authority  the  Historia 
de  la  Conquista  de  las  siete  islas  de  Gran  Canaria,  de  Juan  de 
Abreu  Galindo,  1632,  p.  47,  he  adds :  "  Old  historians  relate 
that  a  celebrated  laurel  in  Ferro  formerly  furnished  drinkable 
water  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  island.  The  water  flowed  from 
its  foliage,  uninterruptedly,  drop  by  drop,  and  was  collected  in 
cisterns.  Every  morning  the  sea  breeze  drove  a  cloud  toward 
the  wonderful  tree,  which  attracted  it  to  its  huge  top,"  where 
it  was  condensed  to  a  liquid  form. 

In  a  number  of  the  Missionary  Herald,  published  at  Bos 
ton,  the  date  of  which  I  have  mislaid,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Yan 
Lennep,  well  known  as  a  competent  observer,  gives  the  fol 
lowing  remarkable  account  of  a  similar  fact  witnessed  by  him 
in  an  excursion  to  the  east  of  Tocat  in  Asia  Minor  : 

"  In  this  region,  some  3,000  feet  above  the  sea,  the  trees 
are  mostly  oak,  and  attain  a  large  size.  I  noticed  an  illustra 
tion  of  the  influence  of  trees  in  general  in  collecting  moisture. 
Despite  the  fog,  of  a  week's  duration,  the  ground  was  every 
where  perfectly  dry.  The  dry  oak  leaves,  however,  had  gath 
ered  the  water,  and  the  branches  and  trunks  of  the  trees  were 
more  or  less  wet.  In  many  cases  the  water  had  run  down  the 
trunk  and  moistened  the  soil  around  the  roots  of  the  tree.  In 


186  INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOKEST   ON   PRECIPITATION. 

two  places,  several  trees  had  each  furnished  a  small  stream  of 
water,  and  these,  uniting,  had  run  upon  the  road,  so  that  trav 
ellers  had  to  pass  through  the  mud  ;  although,  as  I  said,  every 
where  else  the  ground  was  perfectly  dry.  Moreover,  the  col 
lected  moisture  was  not  sufficient  to  drop  directly  from  the 
leaves,  but  in  every  case  it  ran  down  the  branches  and  trunk 
to  the  ground.  Farther  on  we  found  a  grove,  and  at  the  foot 
of  each  tree,  on  the  north  side,  was  a  lump  of  ice,  the  water 
having  frozen  as  it  reached  the  ground.  This  is  a  most  strik 
ing  illustration  of  the  acknowledged  influence  of  trees  in  col 
lecting  moisture ;  and  one  cannot  for  a  moment  doubt,  that 
the  parched  regions  which  commence  at  Sivas,  and  extend  in 
one  direction  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  in  another  to  the  Red 
Sea,  were  once  a  fertile  garden,  teeming  with  a  prosperous 
population,  before  the  forests  which  covered  the  hillsides  were 
cut  down — before  the  cedar  and  the  fir  tree  were  rooted  up 
from  the  sides  of  Lebanon. 

"  As  we  now  descended  the  northern  side  of  the  watershed, 
we  passed  through  the  grove  of  walnut,  oak,  and  black  mul 
berry  trees,  which  shade  the  village  of  Oktab,  whose  houses, 
cattle,  and  ruddy  children  were  indicative  of  prosperity." 

Coultas  thus  argues  :  "  The  ocean,  winds,  and  woods  may 
be  regarded  as  the  several  parts  of  a  grand  distillatory  appa 
ratus.  The  sea  is  the  boiler  in  which  vapor  is  raised  by  the 
solar  heat,  the  winds  are  the  guiding  tubes  which  carry  the 
vapor  with  them  to  the  forests  where  a  lower  temperature  pre 
vails.  This  naturally  condenses  the  vapor,  and  showers  of  rain 
are  thus  distilled  from  the  cloud  masses  which  float  in  the 
atmosphere,  by  the  woods  beneath  them."  * 

Sir  John  F.  W.  Herschel  enumerates  among  "  the  influences 
unfavorable  to  rain,"  "  absence  of  vegetation  in  warm  climates, 
and  especially  of  trees.  This  is,  no  doubt,"  continues  he,  "  one 
of  the  reasons  of  the  extreme  aridity  of  Spain.  The  hatred  of 
a  Spaniard  toward  a  tree  is  proverbial.  Many  districts  in 
France  have  been  materially  injured  by  denudation  (Earl  of 

*  What  may  le  learned  from  a  Tree,  p.  117. 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOREST   ON    PRECIPITATION.  187 

Lovelace  on  Climate,  etc.),  and,  on  the  other  hand,  rain  has 
become  more  frequent  in  Egypt  since  the  more  vigorous  culti 
vation  of  the  palm  tree." 

Hohenstein  remarks  :  "  With  respect  to  the  temperature  in 
the  forest,  I  have  already  observed  that,  at  certain  times  of 
the  day  and  of  the  year,  it  is  less  than  in  the  open  field. 
Hence  the  woods  may,  in  the  daytime,  in  summer  and  to 
ward  the  end  of  winter,  tend  to  increase  the  fall  of  rain  ;  but  it 
is  otherwise  in  summer  nights  and  at  the  beginning  of  winter, 
when  there  is  a  higher  temperature  in  the  forest,  which  is  not 
favorable  to  that  effect.  *  *  *  The  wood  is,  further,  like 
the  mountain,  a  mechanical  obstruction  to  the  motion  of  rain 
clouds,  and,  as  it  checks  them  in  their  course,  it  gives  them 
occasion  to  deposit  their  water.  These  considerations  render 
it  probable  that  the  forest  increases  the  quantity  of  rain ;  but 
they  do  not  establish  the  certainty  of  this  conclusion,  because 
we  have  no  positive  numerical  data  to  produce  on  the  de 
pression  of  temperature,  and  the  humidity  of  the  air  in  the 
woods."  * 

Earth  presents  the  following  view  of  the  subject :  "  The 
ground  in  the  forest,  as  well  as  the  atmospheric  stratum  over 
it,  continues  humid  after  the  woodless  districts  have  lost  their 
moisture  ;  and  the  air,  charged  with  the  humidity  drawn  from 
them,  is  usually  carried  away  by  the  winds  before  it  has  de 
posited  itself  in  a  condensed  form  on  the  earth.  Trees  con 
stantly  transpire  through  their  leaves  a  great  quantity  of  moist 
ure,  which  they  partly  absorb  'again  by  the  same  organs,  while 
the  greatest  part  of  their  supply  is  pumped  up  through  their 
widely  ramifying  roots  from  considerable  depths  in  the  ground. 
Thus  a  constant  evaporation  is  produced,  which  keeps  the 
forest  atmosphere  moist  even  in  long  droughts,  when  all  other 
sources  of  humidity  in  the  forest  itself  are  dried  up. 
Little  is  required  to  compel  the  stratum  of  air  resting  upon  a 
wood  to  give  up  its  moisture,  which  thus,  as  rain,  fog,  or  dew, 
is  returned  to  the  forest.  *  *  *  The  warm,  moist  currents 

*  Der  Wald,  p.  13. 


188  INFLUENCE    OF   THE   FOEEST   ON    PRECIPITATION. 

of  air  which  come  from  other  regions  are  cooled  as  they  ap 
proach  the  wood  by  its  less  heated  atmosphere,  and  obliged  to 
let  fall  the  humidity  with  which  they  are  charged.  The  woods 
contribute  to  the  same  effect  by  mechanically  impeding  the 
motion  of  fog  and  rain  cloud,  whose  particles  are  thus  accumu 
lated  and  condensed  to  rain.  The  forest  thus  has  a  greater 
power  than  the  open  ground  to  retain  within  its  own  limits 
already  existing  humidity,  and  to  preserve  it,  and  it  attracts 
and  collects  that  which  the  wind  brings  it  from  elsewhere,  and 
forces  it  to  deposit  itself  as  rain  or  other  precipitation.  *  *  * 
In  consequence  of  these  relations  of  the  forest  to  humidity,  it 
follows  that  wooded  districts  have  botli  more  frequent  and 
more  abundant  rain,  and  in  general  are  more  humid,  than 
woodless  regions  ;  for  what  is  true  of  the  woods  themselves,  in 
this  respect,  is  true  also  of  their  treeless  neighborhood,  which, 
in  consequence  of  the  ready  mobility  of  the  air  and  its  constant 
changes,  receives  a  share  of  the  characteristics  of  the  forest 
atmosphere,  coolness  and  moisture.  *  *  *  When  the  dis 
tricts  stripped  of  trees  have  long  been  deprived  of  rain  and 
dew,  *  *  *  and  the  grass  and  the  fruits  of  the  field  are 
ready  to  wither,  the  grounds  which  are  surrounded  by  woods 
are  green  and  flourishing.  By  night  they  are  refreshed  with 
dew,  which  is  never  wanting  in  the  moist  air  of  the  forest,  and 
in  due  season  they  are  watered  by  a  beneficent  shower,  or  a 
mist  which  rolls  slowly  over  them."  * 

Asbjornsen,  after  adducing  the  familiar  theoretical  argu 
ments  on  this  point,  adds  :  "  The  rainless  territories  in  Peru 
and  North  Africa  establish  this  conclusion,  and  numerous 
other  examples  show  that  wroods  exert  an  influence  in  pro 
ducing  rain,  and  that  rain  fails  where  they  are  wanting ;  for 
many  countries  have,  by  the  destruction  of  the  forests,  been 
deprived  of  rain,  moisture,  springs,  and  watercourses,  which 
are  necessary  for  vegetable  growth.  *  *  *  The  narratives 
of  travellers  show  the  deplorable  consequences  of  felling 
the  woods  in  the  Island  of  Trinidad,  Martinique,  San  Do- 

*  Om  Slovene  og  deres  Forliold  til  Nationalccconomien,  pp.  131-133. 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOKEST   ON    PRECIPITATION.  189 

rmngo,  and  indeed,  in  almost  the  entire  West  Indian  group 
*  *  *x"  In  Palestine  and  many  other  parts  of  Asia  and 
Northern  Africa,  which  in  ancient  times  were  the  granaries 
of  Europe,  fertile  and  populous,  similar  consequences  have 
been  experienced.  These  lands  are  now  deserts,  and  it  is 
the  destruction  of  the  forests  alone  which  has  produced  this 
desolation.  *  *  In  Southern  France,  many  districts  have, 
from  the  same  cause,  become  barren  wastes  of  stone,  and  the 
cultivation  of  the  vine  and  the  olive  has  suffered  severely  since 
the  baring  of  the  neighboring  mountains.  Since  the  extensive 
clearings  between  the  Spree  and  the  Oder,  the  inhabitants 
complain  that  the  clover  crop  is  much  less  productive  than 
before.  On  the  other  hand,  examples  of  the  beneficial  influ 
ence  of  planting  and  restoring  the  woods  are  not  wanting.  In 
Scotland,  where  many  miles  square  have  been  planted  with 
trees,  this  effect  has  been  manifest,  and  similar  observations 
have  been  made  in  several  places  in  Southern  France.  In 
Lower  Egypt,  both  at  Cairo  and  near  Alexandria,  rain  rarely 
fell  in  considerable  quantity — for  example,  during  the  French 
occupation  of  Egypt,  about  1798,  it  did  not  rain  for  sixteen 
months — but  since  Mehemet  Aali  and  Ibrahim  Pacha  executed 
their  vast  plantations  (the  former  alone  having  planted  more 
than  twenty  millions  of  olive  and  fig  trees,  cottonwood, 
oranges,  acacias,  planes,  &c.),  there  now  falls  a  good  deal  of 
rain,  especially  along  the  coast,  in  the  months  of  November, 
December,  and  January  ;  and  even  at  Cairo  it  rains  both 
oftener  and  more  abundantly,  so  that  real  showers  are  no 
rarity."  * 

Babinet,  in  one  of  his  lectures,f  cites  the  supposed  fact  of 
the  increase  of  rain  in  Egypt  in  consequence  of  the  planting 
of  trees,  and  thus  remarks  upon  it :  "  A  few  years  ago  it 
never  rained  in  Lower  Egypt.  The  constant  north  winds, 
which  almost  exclusively  prevail  there,  passed  without  obstruc 
tion  over  a  surface  bare  of  vegetation.  Grain  was  kept  on 

*  Om  Slovene  og  om  ct  ordnet  Skov'brug  i  Norge,  p.  108. 
t  Etudes  ei  Lectures,  iv.  p.  114. 


190  INFLUENCE    OF   THE   FOREST    ON    PRECIPITATION. 

the  roofs  in  Alexandria,  without  being  covered  or  otherwise 
protected  from  injury  by  the  atmosphere ;  but  since  the  mak 
ing  of  plantations,  an  obstacle  has  been  created  which  retards 
the  current  of  air  from  the  north.  The  air  thus  checked,  accu 
mulates,  dilates,  cools,  and  yields  rain.*  The  forests  of  the 


*  The  supposed  increase  in  the  frequency  and  quantity  of  rain  in  Lower 
Egypt  is  by  no  means  established.  I  have  heard  it  disputed  on  the  spot 
by  intelligent  Franks,  whose  residence  in  that  country  began  before  the 
plantations  of  Hehemet  Aali  and  Ibrahim  Pacha,  and  I  have  been  assured 
by  them  that  meteorological  observations,  made  at  Alexandria  about  the 
beginning  of  this  century,  show  an  annual  fall  of  rain  as  great  as  is  usual 
at  this  day.  The  mere  fact,  that  it  did  not  rain  during  the  French  occu 
pation,  is  not  conclusive.  Having  experienced  a  gentle  shower  of  nearly 
twenty-four  hours'  duration  in  Upper  Egypt,  I  inquired  of  the  local  gov 
ernor  in  relation  to  the  frequency  of  this  phenomenon,  and  was  told  by 
him  that  not  a  drop  of  rain  had  fallen  at  that  point  for  more  than  two 
years  previous. 

The  belief  in  the  increase  of  rain  in  Egypt  rests  almost  entirely  on  the 
observations  of  Marshal  Marmont,  and  the  evidence  collected  by  him  in 
1836.  His  conclusions  have  been  disputed,  if  not  confuted,  by  Jomard 
and  others,  and  are  probably  erroneous.  See,  FOISSAC,  Meieorologie,  Ger 
man  translation,  pp.  634-639. 

It  certainly  sometimes  rains  briskly  at  Cairo,  but  evaporation  is  exceed 
ingly  rapid  in  Egypt — as  any  one,  who  ever  saw  a  Fellah  woman  wash  a 
napkin  in  the  Nile,  and  dry  it  by  shaking  it  a  few  moments  in  the  air,  can 
testify ;  and  a  heap  of  grain,  wet  a  few  inches  below  the  surface,  would 
probably  dry  again  without  injury.  At  any  rate,  the  Egyptian  Govern 
ment  often  has  vast  quantities  of  wheat  stored  at  Boulak,  in  uncovered 
yards  through  the  winter,  though  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  slovenliness 
and  want  of  foresight  in  Oriental  life,  public  and  private,  are  such  that  we 
cannot  infer  the  safety  of  any  practice  followed  in  the  East,  merely  from 
its  long  continuance. 

Grain,  however,  may  be  long  kept  in  the  open  air  in  climates  much 
less  dry  than  that  of  Egypt,  without  injury,  except  to  the  superficial 
layers ;  for  moisture  does  not  penetrate  to  a  great  depth  in  a  heap  of  grain 
once  well  dried,  and  kept  well  aired.  When  Louis  IX  was  making  his 
preparations  for  his  campaign  in  the  East,  he  had  large  quantities  of  wine 
and  grain  purchased  in  the  Island  of  Cyprus,  and  stored  up,  for  two  years, 
to  await  his  arrival.  "  When  we  were  come  to  Cyprus,"  says  Joinville, 
Eistoire  de  Saint  Louis,  §§  72,  73,  "  we  found  there  greate  foison  of  tho 
Kynge's  purveyance.  *  *  The  wheate  and  the  barley  they  had  piled 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOREST   ON    PRECIPITATION.  191 

Vosges  and  Ardennes  produce  the  same  effects  in  the  north 
east  of  France,  and  send  us  a  great  river,  the  Meuse,  which  is 
as  remarkable  for  its  volume  as  for  the  small  extent  of  its 
basin.  With  respect  to  the  retardation  of  the  atmospheric 
currents,  and  the  effects  of  that  retardation,  one  of  my  illus 
trious  colleagues,  M.  Mignet,  who  is  not  less  a  profound 
thinker  than  an  eloquent  writer,  suggested  to  me  that,  to  pro 
duce  rain,  a  forest  was  as  good  as  a  mountain,  and  this  is 
literally  true." 

Monestier-Savignat  arrives  at  this  conclusion  :  "  Forests  on 
the  one  hand  diminish  evaporation  ;  on  the  other,  they  act  on 
the  atmosphere  as  refrigerating  causes.  The  second  scale  of 
the  balance  predominates  over  the  other,  for  it  is  established 
that  in  wooded  countries  it  rains  oftener,  and  that,  the  quan 
tity  of  rain  being  equal,  they  are  more  humid."  * 

Boussingault — whose  observations  on  the  drying  up  of 
lakes  and  springs,  from  the  destruction  of  the  woods,  in  trop 
ical  America,  have  often  been  cited  as  a  conclusive  proof  that 
the  quantity  of  rain  was  thereby  diminished — after  examining 
the  question  with  much  care,  remarks :  "  In  my  judgment  it 
is  settled  that  very  large  clearings  must  diminish  the  annual 
fall  of  rain  in  a  country  ;  "  and  on  a  subsequent  page,  he  con 
cludes  that,  u  arguing  from  meteorological  facts  collected  in 
the  equinoctial  regions,  there  is  reason  to  presume  that  clear 
ings  diminish  the  annual  fall  of  rain."  f 

The  same  eminent  author  proposes  series  of  observations  on 
the  level  of  natural  lakes,  especially  on  those  without  outlet, 
as  a  means  of  determining  the  increase  or  diminution  of  pre 
cipitation  in  their  basins,  and,  of  course,  of  measuring  the 

up  in  greate  heapes  in  the  feeldes,  and  to  looke  vpon,  they  were  like  vnto 
mountaynes;  for  the  raine,  the  whyche  hadde  beaten  vpon  the  wheate  now 
a  longe  whyle,  had  made  it  to  sproute  on  the  toppe,  so  that  it  seemed  as 
greene  grasse.  And  whanne  they  were  mynded  to  carrie  it  to  Egypte, 
they  brake  that  sod  of  greene  herbe,  and  dyd  finde  under  the  same  the 
wheate  and  the  barley,  as  fresh e  as  yf  menne  hadde  butnowe  thrashed  it.'1 

*  Etude  sur  les  Eaux  au  point  de  vue  des  Inondations,  p.  91. 

t  Economic  Rnrfle,  ii,  chap,  xx,  §  4,  pp.  756-759.     See  also  p.  733. 


192  INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOREST    ON    PRECIPITATION. 

effect  of  clearing  when  such  operations  take  place  within 
basins.  But  it  must  be  observed  that  lakes  without  a  visible 
outlet  are  of  very  rare  occurrence,  and  besides,  where  no 
superficial  conduit  for  the  discharge  of  lacustrine  waters  exists, 
we  can  seldom  or  never  be  sure  that  nature  has  not  provided 
subterranean  channels  for  their  escape.  Indeed,  when  we 
consider  that  most  earths,  and  even  some  rocks  under  great 
hydrostatic  pressure,  are  freely  permeable  by  water,  and  that 
fissures  are  frequent  in  almost  all  rocky  strata,  it  is  evident 
that  we  cannot  know  in  what  proportion  the  depression  of  the 
level  of  a  lake  is  to  be  ascribed  to  infiltration,  to  percolation, 
or  to  evaporation.*  Further,  we  are,  in  general,  as  little  able 
to  affirm  that  a  given  lake  derives  all  its  water  from  the  fall 
of  rain  within  its  geographical  basin,  or  that  it  receives  all  the 
water  that  falls  in  that  basin  except  what  evaporates  from  the 
ground,  as  we  are  to  show  that  all  its  superfluous  water  is 
carried  off  by  visible  channels  and  by  evaporation. 

Suppose  the  strata  of  the  mountains  on  two  sides  of  a  lake, 
east  and  west,  to  be  tilted  in  the  same  direction,  and  that  those 
of  the  hill  on  the  east  side  incline  toward  the  lake,  those  of 
that  on  the  west  side  from  it.  In  this  case  a  large  proportion 
of  the  rain  which  falls  on  the  eastern  slope  of  the  eastern  hill 
may  find  its  way  between  the  strata  to  the  lake,  and  an  equally 
large  proportion  of  the  precipitation  upon  the  eastern  slope  of 
the  western  ridge  may  escape  out  of  the  basin  by  similar  chan 
nels.  In  such  case  the  clearing  of  the  outer  slopes  of  either 
or  both  mountains,  while  the  forests  of  the  inner  declivities 
remained  intact,  might  affect  the  quantity  of  water  received  by 
the  lake,  and  it  would  always  be  impossible  to  know  to  what 
territorial  extent  influences  thus  affecting  the  level  of  a  lake 

*  Jacini,  speaking  of  the  great  Italian  lakes,  says :  "A  large  proportion 
of  the  water  of  the  lakes,  instead  of  discharging  itself  by  the  Ticino,  the 
Adda,  the  Oglio,  the  Mincio,  filters  through  the  silicious  strata  which 
underlie  the  hills,  and  follows  subterranean  channels  to  the  plain,  where 
it  collects  in  the  fontanili,  and  being  thence  conducted  into  the  canals  of 
irrigation,  becomes  a  source  of  great  fertility.1' — La  Proprieta  Fondiaria^ 
etc.,  p.  144. 


INFLUENCE   OF    TlIE   FOREST   ON    PRECIPITATION.  193 

miglit  reach.  Boussingault  admits  that  extensive  clearing 
'below  an  alpine  lake,  even  at  a  considerable  distance,  might 
affect  the  level  of  its  waters.  How  it  would  produce  this 
influence  he  does  not  inform  us,  but,  as  he  says  nothing  of  the 
natural  subterranean  drainage  of  surface  waters,  it  is  to  be 
presumed  that  he  refers  to  the  supposed  diminution  of  the 
quantity  of  rain  from  the  removal  of  the  forest,  which  might 
manifest  itself  at  a  point  more  elevated  than  the  cause  which 
occasioned  it.  The  elevation  or  depression  of  the  level  of  nat 
ural  lakes,  then,  cannot  be  relied  upon  as  a  proof,  still  less  as  a 
measure  of  an  increase  or  diminution  in  the  fall  of  rain  within 
their  geographical  basins,  resulting  from  the  felling  of  the 
woods  which  covered  them ;  though  such  phenomena  afford 
very  strong  presumptive  evidence  that  the  supply  of  water  is 
somehow  augmented  or  lessened.  The  supply  is,  in  most 
cases,  derived  much  less  from  the  precipitation  which  falls 
directly  upon  the  surface  of  lakes,  than  from  waters  which 
flow  above  or  under  the  ground  around  them,  and  which,  in 
the  latter  case,  often  come  from  districts  not  comprised  within 
what  superficial  geography  would  regard  as  belonging  to  the 
lake  basins. 

It  is,  upon  the  whole,  evident  that  the  question  can  hardly 
be  determined  except  by  the  comparison  of  pluviometrical 
observations  made  at  a  given  station  before  and  after  the  de 
struction  of  the  woods.  Such  observations,  unhappily,  are 
scarcely  to  be  found,  and  the  opportunity  for  making  them  is 
rapidly  passing  away,  except  so  far  as  a  converse  series  might 
be  collected  in  countries — France,  for  example — where  forest 
plantation  is  now  going  on  upon  a  large  scale.  The  Smith 
sonian  Institution  at  Washington  is  well  situated  for  directing 
the  attention  of  observers  in  the  newer  territory  of  the  United 
States  to  this  subject,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  it  will  not  fail 
to  avail  itself  of  its  facilities  for  this  purpose. 

Numerous  other  authorities  might  be  cited  in  support  of 
the  proposition  that  forests  tend,  at  least  in  certain  latitudes 
and  at  certain  seasons,  to  produce  rain  ;  but  though  the  argu 
ments  of  the  advocates  of  this  doctrine  are  very  plausible,  not 
13 


INFLUENCE    OF   THE    FOREST    ON    PRECIPITATION. 

to  say  convincing,  their  opinions  are  rather  a  priori  conclusions 
from  general  meteorological  laws,  than  deductions  from  facts 
of  observation,  and  it  is  remarkable  that  there  is  so  little  direct 
evidence  on  the  subject. 

On  the  other  hand,  Foissac  expresses  the  opinion  that 
forests  have  no  influence  on  precipitation,  beyond  that  of  pro 
moting  the  deposit  of  dew  in  their  vicinity,  and  he  states,  as  a 
fact  of  experience^  that  the  planting  of  large  vegetables,  and 
especially  of  trees,  is  a  very  efficient  means  of  drying  morasses, 
because  the  plants  draw  from  the  earth  a  quantity  of  water 
larger  than  the  average  annual  fall  of  rain.*  Kloden,  admit 
ting  that  the  rivers  Oder  and  Elbe  have  diminished  in  quan 
tity  of  water,  the  former  since  1778,  the  latter  since  1828, 
denies  that  the  diminution  of  volume  is  to  be  ascribed  to  a 
decrease  of  precipitation  in  consequence  of  the  felling  of  the 
forests,  and  states,  what  other  physicists  confirm,  that,  during 
the  same  period,  meteorological  records  in  various  parts  of 
Europe  show  rather  an  augmentation  than  a  reduction  of 
rain.f 

The  observations  of  Belgrand  tend  to  show,  contrary  to  the 
general  opinion,  that  less  rain  falls  in  wooded  than  in  denuded 
districts.  He  compared  the  precipitation  for  the  year  1852,  at 
Yezelay  in  the  valley  of  the  Bouchat,  and  at  Avallon  in  the 
valley  of  the  Grenetiere.  At  the  first  of  these  places  it  was 
881  millimetres,  at  the  latter  581  millimetres.  The  two  cities 
are  not  more  than  eight  miles  apart.  They  are  at  the  same 
altitude,  and  it  is  stated  that  the  only  difference  in  their  geo 
graphical  conditions  consists  in  the  different  proportions  of 
forest  and  cultivated  country  around  them,  the  basin  of  the 
Bouchat  being  entirely  bare,  while  that  of  the  Grenetiere  is 
well  wooded4  Observations  in  the  same  valleys,  considered 


*  Meteorologie,  German  translation  by  EMSMANN,  p.  605. 

t  HandbucJi  dcr  Physischen  Geographic,  p.  658. 

\  Annales  des  Pouts  et  Cliaussees,  1854,  1st  semestre,  pp.  21  et  seqq. 
See  the  comments  of  VALLKS  on  these  observations,  in  his  fitudes  sur  le* 
Inondatwns,  pp.  441  et  seqq. 


INFLUENCE   OF  THE  FOKEST  ON   PEECIPITATION.  195 

with  reference  to  the  seasons,  show  the  following  pluviometric 
results : 

FOE   LA   GEENETIEEE. 

February,    1852, 42.2  millimetres  precipitation. 

November,     '; 28.8          "  " 

January,      1853, 35.4          "  " 

Total, 106.4  in  three  cold  months. 

September,  1851, 27.1  millimetres  precipitation. 

May,  1852, 20.9          "  " 

June,  " 56.3  "  " 

July,  " 22.8          "  " 

September,     " 22.8          u  " 

Total, 149.9  in  five  warm  months. 

FOE   LE    BOUCHAT. 

February,    1852, 51.3  millimetres  precipitation. 

November,     " 36.6  "  " 

January,   1853, 92.0     "        " 

Total,     ........  179.9  in  three  cold  months. 

September,  1851, 43.8  millimetres  precipitation. 

May,  1852,  .......  13.2          "  " 

June,  " 55.5  "  " 

July,  " 19.5  "  " 

September,     " 26.5          "  " 

Total, 158.5  in  five  warm  months. 

These  observations,  so  far  as  they  go,  seem  to  show  that 
more  rain  falls  in  cleared  than  in  wooded  countries,  but  this 
result  is  so  contrary  to  what  has  been  generally  accepted  as  a 
theoretical  conclusion,  that  further  experiment  is  required  to 
determine  the  question. 

Becquerel — whose  treatise  on  the  climatic  effects  of  the 
destruction  of  the  forest  is  the  fullest  general  discussion  of  that 
subject  known  to  me — does  not  examine  this  particular  point, 
and  as,  in  the  summary  of  the  results  of  his  investigations,  he 
does  not  ascribe  to  the  forest  any  influence  upon  precipitation, 
the  presumption  is  that  he  rejects  the  doctrine  of  its  import 
ance  as  an  agent  in  producing  the  fall  of  rain. 


196  ACTION    OF   THE   FOKE8T   ON    THE    SOIL. 

The  effect  of  the  forest  on  precipitation,  then,  is  Rot  entirely 
free  from  doubt,  and  we  cannot  positively  affirm  that  the  total 
annual  quantity  of  rain  is  diminished  or  increased  by  the  de 
struction  of  the  woods,  though  both  theoretical  considerations 
and  the  balance  of  testimony  strongly  favor  the  opinion  that 
more  rain  falls  in  wooded  than  in  open  countries.  One  im 
portant  conclusion,  at  least,  upon  the  meteorological  influence 
of  forests  is  certain  and  undisputed  :  the  proposition,  namely, 
that,  within  their  own  limits,  and  near  their  own  borders, 
they  maintain  a  more  uniform  degree  of  humidity  in  the 
atmosphere  than  is  observed  in  cleared  grounds.  Scarcely 
less  can  it  be  questioned  that  they  promote  the  frequency  of 
showers,  and,  if  they  do  not  augment  the  amount  of  precip 
itation,  they  equalize  its  distribution  through  the  different 
seasons. 

Influence  of  the  Forest  on  the  Humidity  of  the  Soil. 

I  have  hitherto  confined  myself  to  the  influence  of  the 
forest  on  meteorological  conditions,  a  subject,  as  has  been  seen, 
full  of  difficulty  and  uncertainty.  Its  comparative  effects  on 
-  the  temperature,  the  humidity,  the  texture  and  consistence, 
the  configuration  and  distribution  of  the  mould  or  arable  soil, 
and,  very  often,  of  the  mineral  strata  below,  and  on  the  per 
manence  and  regularity  of  springs  and  greater  superficial 
watercourses,  are  much  less  disputable  as  well  as  more  easily  esti 
mated,  and  much  more  important,  than  its  possible  value  as  a 
cause  of  strictly  climatic  equilibrium  or  disturbance. 

The  action  of  the  forest  on  the  earth  is  chiefly  mechanical, 
{  but  the  organic  process  of  abstraction  of  water  by  its  roots 
\  affects  the  quantity  of  that  fluid  contained  in  the  vegetable 
mould,  and  in  the  mineral  strata  near  the  surface,  and,  conse 
quently,  the  consistency  of  the  soil.     In  treating  of  the  effects 
of  trees  on  the  moisture  of  the  atmosphere,  I  have  said  that  the 
forest,  by  interposing   a   canopy  between  the   sky  and  the 
ground,  and  by  covering  the  surface  with  a  thick  mantle  of 
fallen  leaves,  at  once  obstructed  insolation  and  prevented  the 


INFLUENCE    OF   THE    FOREST   OX    SPRINGS.  197 

radiation  of  lieat  from  the  earth.  These  influences  go  far  to 
balance  each  other ;  but  familiar  observation  shows  that,  in 
summer,  the  forest  soil  is  not  raised  to  so  high  a  temperature 
as  open  grounds  exposed  to  irradiation.  For  this  reason,  and 
in  consequence  of  the  mechanical  resistance  opposed  by  the 
bed  of  dead  leaves  to  the  escape  of  moisture,  we  should  expect 
that,  except  after  recent  rains,  the  superficial  strata  of  wood 
land  soil  would  be  more  humid  than  that  of  cleared  land. 
This  agrees  with  experience.  The  soil  of  the  forest  is  always 
moist,  except  in  the  extremest  droughts,  and  it  is  exceedingly 
rare  that  a  primitive  wood  suffers  from  want  of  humidity. 
How^  far  this  accumulation  of  water  affects  the  condition  of 
neighboring  grounds  by  lateral  infiltration,  we  do  not  know, 
but  we  shall  see,  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  that  water  is  con 
veyed  to  great  distances  by  this  process,  and 'we  may  hence 
infer  that  the  influence  in  question  is  an  important  one. 

Influence  of  the  Forest  on  tJie  Floiv  of  Springs. 

It  is  well  established  that  the  protection  afforded  by  the 
forest  against  the  escape  of  moisture  from  its  soil,  insures  the 
permanence  and  regularity  of  natural  springs,  not  only  within 
the  limits  of  the  wood,  but  at  some  distance  beyond  its  bor 
ders,  and  thus  contributes  to  the  supply  of  an  element  essen 
tial  to  both  vegetable  and  animal  life.  As  the  forests  are 
destroyed,  the  springs  which  flowed  from  the  woods,  and,  con 
sequently,  the  greater  watercourses  fed  by  them,  diminish 
both  in  number  and  in  volume.  This  fact  is  so  familiar 
throughout  the  American  States  and  the  British  Provinces, 
that  there  are  few  old  residents  of  the  interior  of  those  districts 
who  are  not  able  to  testify  to  its  truth  as  a  matter  of  personal 
observation.  My  own  recollection  suggests  to  me  many  in 
stances  of  this  sort,  and  I  remember  one  case  where  a  small 
mountain  spring,  which  disappeared  soon  after  the  clearing  of 
the  ground  where  it  rose,  was  recovered  about  ten  or  twelve 
years  ago,  by  simply  allowing  the  bushes  and  young  trees  to 
grow  up  on  a  rocky  knoll,  not  more  than  half  an  acre  in 


198         INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST  ON  SPRINGS. 

extent,  immediately  above  it,  and  has  since  continued  to  flow 
uninterruptedly.  The  uplands  in  the  Atlantic  States  formerly 
abounded  in  sources  and  rills,  but  in  many  parts  of  those 
States  which  have  been  cleared  for  above  a  generation  or  two, 
the  hill  pastures  now  suffer  severely  from  drought,  and  in  dry 
seasons  no  longer  afford  either  water  or  herbage  for  cattle. 

Foissac,  indeed,  quotes  from  the  elder  Pliny  (Nat.  Hist., 
xxxi,  c.  30)  a  passage  affirming  that  the  felling  of  the  woods 
gives  rise  to  springs  which  did  not  exist  before  because  the 
water  of  the  soil  was  absorbed  by  the  trees;  and  the  same 
meteorologist  declares,  as  I  observed  in  treating  of  the  effect 
of  the  forest  011  atmospheric  humidity,  that  the  planting  of 
trees  tends  to  drain  marshy  ground,  because  the  roots  absorb 
more  water  than  falls  from  the  air.  But  Pliny's  statement 
rests  on  very  doubtful  authority,  and  Foissac  cites  no  evidence 
in  support  of  his  own  proposition.*  In  the  American  States, 
it  is  always  observed  that  clearing  the  ground  not  only  causes 
running  springs  to  disappear,  but  dries  up  the  stagnant  pools 
and  the  spongy  soils  of  the  low  grounds.  The  first  roads  in 
those  States  ran  along  the  ridges,  when  practicable,  because 
there  only  was  the  earth  dry  enough  to  allow  of  their  construc 
tion,  and,  for  the  same  reason,  the  cabins  of  the  first  settlers 
were  perched  upon  the  hills.  As  the  forests  have  been  from 
time  to  time  removed,  and  the  face  of  the  earth  laid  open  to 
the  air  and  sun,  the  moisture  has  been  evaporated,  and  the 
removal  of  the  highways  and  of  human  habitations  from  the 
bleak  hills  to  the  sheltered  valleys,  is  one  of  the  most  agree- 

*  The  passage  in  Pliny  is  as  follows:  "Nascuntur  fontes,  decisis 
plerumque  silvis,  quos  arbornm  alirnenta  consumebant,  sicut  in  Hcemo, 
obsidente  Gallos  Cassandro,  quum  valli  gratia  cecidissent.  Plernmqne 
vero  damnosi  torrentes  corrivantur,  detracta  collibus  silva  continere 
nimbos  ac  digerere  consueta." — Nat.  Hist.,  xxxi,  30. 

Seneca  cites  this  case,  and  another  similar  one  said  to  have  been  ob 
served  at  Magnesia,  from  a  passage  in  Theophrastus,  not  to  be  found  in  the 
extant  works  of  that  author ;  but  he  adds  that  the  stories  are  incredible, 
because  shaded  grounds  abound  most  in  water:  fere  aquosissima  sunt 
qusecnrnque  umbrosissima. — Quasi.  Nat.,  iii,  11.  See  Appendix,  ]S"o.  25. 


INFLUENCE   OF  THE   FOKEST   ON   SPRINGS.  199 

able  among  the  many  improvements  which  later  generations 
fiave  witnessed  in  the  interior  of  New  England  and  the  other 
Northern  States. 

Almost  every  treatise  on  the  economy  of  the  forest  adduces 
numerous  facts  in  support  of  the  doctrine  that  the  clearing  of 
the  woods  tends  to  diminish  the  flow  of  springs  and  the  hu 
midity  of  the  soil,  and  it  might  seem  unnecessary  to  bring 
forward  further  evidence  on  this  point*  But  the  subject  is  of 
too  much  practical  importance  and  of  too  great  philosophical 
interest  to  be  summarily  disposed  of;  and  it  ought  particu 
larly  to  be  noticed  that  there  is  at  least  one  case — that  of  some 
loose  soils  which,  when  bared  of  wood,  very  rapidly  absorb 
and  transmit  to  lower  strata  the  water  they  receive  from  the 
atmosphere,  as  argued  by  Valles  f — where  the  removal  of  the 
forest  may  increase  the  flow  of  springs  at  levels  below  it,  by 
exposing  to  the  rain  and  melted  snow  a  surface  more  bibulous, 
and  at  the  same  time  less  retentive,  than  its  original  covering. 
Under  such  circumstances,  the  water  of  precipitation,  which 
had  formerly  flowed  off  without  penetrating  through  the  super 
ficial  layers  of  leaves  upon  the  ground — as,  in  very  heavy 
showers,  it  sometimes  does — or  been  absorbed  by  the  vegetable 
mould  and  retained  until  it  was  evaporated,  might  descend 
through  porous  earth  until  it  meets  an  impermeable  stratum, 
and  then  be  conducted  along  it,  until,  finally,  at  the  outcrop- 

*  "  "Why  go  so  far  for  the  proof  of  a  phenomenon  that  is  repeated  every 
day  tinder  our  own  eyes,  and  of  which  every  Parisian  may  convince  him 
self,  without  venturing  heyond  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  or  the  forest  of 
Meudon  ?  Let  him,  after  a  few  rainy  days,  pass  along  the  Chevrense  road, 
which  is  bordered  on  the  right  by  the  wood,  on  the  left  by  cultivated 
fields.  The  fall  of  water  and  the  continuance  of  the  rain  have  been  the  same 
on  both  sides ;  but  the  ditch  on  the  side  of  the  forest  will  remain  filled 
with  water  proceeding  from  the  infiltration  through  the  wooded  soil, 
long  after  the  other,  contiguous  to  the  open  ground,  has  performed  its 
office  of  drainage  and  become  dry.  The  ditch  on  the  left  will  have  dis 
charged  in  a  few  hours  a  quantity  of  water,  which  the  ditch  on  the  right 
requires  several  days  to  receive  and  carry  down  to  the  valley." — CLAV£. 
Etudes,  etc.,  pp.  53,  54. 

f  VALLES,  Etudes  avr  frs  Tnondntlann,  p.  472. 


200  INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOEEST    ON    SPRINGS. 

ping  of  tliis  stratum,  it  bursts  from  a  hillside  as  a  running 
spring.  But  such  instances  are  doubtless  too  rare  to  form  a 
frequent  or  an  important  exception  to  the  general  law,  because 
it  is  only  under  very  uncommon  circumstances  that  rain  water 
runs  off  over  the  surface  of  forest  ground  instead  of  sinking 
into  it,  and  very  rarely  the  case  that  such  a  soil  as  has  just 
been  supposed  is  covered  by  a  layer  of  vegetable  earth  thick 
enough  to  retain,  until  it  is  evaporated,  all  the  rain  that  falls 
upon  it,  without  imparting  any  water  to  the  strata  below  it. 

If  we  look  at  the  point  under  discussion  as  purely  a  ques 
tion  of  fact,  to  be  determined  by  positive  evidence  and  not  by 
argument,  the  observations  of  Boussingault  are,  both  in  the 
circumstances  they  detail,  and  in  the  weight  of  authority  to 
be  attached  to  the  testimony,  among  the  most  important  yet 
recorded.  They  are  embodied  in  the  fourth  section  of  the 
twentieth  chapter  of  that  writer's  Economic  Rurale^  and  I  have 
already  referred  to  them  on  page  101  for  another  purpose. 
The  interest  of  the  question  will  justify  me  in  giving,  in  Bous 
singault' s  own  words,  the  facts  and  some  of  the  remarks  with 
which  he  accompanies  the  details  of  them :  "  In  many  local 
ities,"  he  observes,*  "it  has  been  thought  that,  within  a  certain 
number  of  years,  a  sensible  diminution  has  been  perceived  in 
the  volume  of  water  of  streams  utilized  as  a  motive  power ; 
at  other  points,  there  are  grounds  for  believing  that  rivers 
have  become  shallower,  and  the  increasing  breadth  of  the  belt 
of  pebbles  along  their  banks  seems  to  prove  the  loss  of  a  part 
of  their  water ;  and,  finally,  abundant  springs  have  almost 
dried  up.  These  observations  have  been  principally  made  in 
valleys  bounded  by  high  mountains,  and  it  is  thought  to  have 
been  noticed  that  this  diminution  of  the  waters  has  imme 
diately  followed  the  epoch  when  the  inhabitants  have  begun 
to  destroy,  unsparingly,  the  woods  which  were  spread  over  the 
face  of  the  land. 

"  These  facts  would  indicate  that,  where  clearings  have 
been  made,  it  rains  less  than  formerly,  and  this  is  the  gener- 

*  Economic  liurale,  p.  730. 


INFLUENCE    OF   THE   FOREST   ON    SPRINGS.  201 

ally  received  opinion.  *  *  *  But  while  the  facts  I  have 
stated  have  been  established,  it  has  been  observed,  at  the  same 
time,  that,  since  the  clearing  of  the  mountains,  the  rivers  and 
the  torrents,  which  seemed  to  have  lost  a  part  of  their  water, 
sometimes  suddenly  swell,  and  that,  occasionally,  to  a  degree 
which  causes  great  disasters.  Besides,  after  violent  storms, 
springs  which  had  become  almost  exhausted  have  been  ob 
served  to  burst  out  with  impetuosity,  and  soon  after  to  dry  up 
again.  These  latter  observations,  it  will  be  easily  conceived, 
warn  us  not  to  admit  hastily  the  common  opinion  that  the 
felling  of  the  woods  lessens  the  quantity  of  rain  ;  for  not  only 
is  it  very  possible  that  the  quantity  of  rain  has  not  changed, 
but  the  mean  volume  of  running  water  may  have  remained 
the  same,  in  spite  of  the  appearance  of  drought  presented  by 
the  rivers  and  springs,  at  certain  periods  of  the  year.  Perhaps 
the  only  difference  would  be  that  the  flow  of  the  same  quantity 
of  water  becomes  more  irregular  in  consequence  of  clearing. 
For  instance :  if  the  low  water  of  the  Rhone  during  one  part 
of  the  year  were  exactly  compensated  by  a  sufficient  number 
of  floods,  it  would  follow  that  this  river  would  convey  to  the 
Mediterranean  the  same  volume  of  water  which  it  carried  to 
that  sea  in  ancient  times,  before  the  period  when  the  countries 
near  its  source  were  stripped  of  their  woods,  and  when,  prob 
ably,  its  mean  depth  was  not  subject  to  so  great  variations  as 
in  our  days.  If  this  were  so,  the  forests  would  have  this  value 
— that  of  regulating,  of  economizing  in  a  certain  sort,  the 
drainage  of  the  rain  water. 

"  If  running  streams  really  become  rarer  in  proportion  as 
clearing  is  extended,  it  follows  either  that  the  rain  is  less  abun 
dant,  or  that  evaporation  is  greatly  favored  by  a  surface  which 
is  no  longer  protected  by  trees  against  the  rays  of  the  sun  and 
the  wind.  These  two  causes,  acting  in  the  same  direction, 
must  often  be  cumulative  in  their  effects,  and  before  we  at 
tempt  to  fix  the  value  of  each,  it  is  proper  to  inquire  whether 
it  is  an  established  fact  that  running  waters  diminish  on  the 
surface  of  a  country  in  which  extensive  clearing  is  going  on  ; 
in  a  word,  to  examine  whether  an  apparent  fact  has  not  been 


202  INFLUENCE    OF   TIIE   FOREST   ON    SPRINGS. 

mistaken  for  a  real  one.  And  here  lies  the  practical  point  of 
the  question  ;  for  if  it  is  once  established  that  clearing  dimin 
ishes  the  volume  of  streams,  it  is  less  important  to  know  to  what 
special  cause  this  effect  is  due.  *  *  *  I  shall  attach  no 
value  except  to  facts  which  have  taken  place  under  the  eye  of 
man,  as  it  is  the  influence  of  his  labors  on  the  meteorological 
condition  of  the  atmosphere  which  I  propose  to  estimate. 
What  I  am  about  to  detail  has  been  observed  particularly  in 
America,  but  I  shall  endeavor  to  establish,  that  what  I  believe 
to  be  true  of  America  would  be  equally  so  for  any  other  con 
tinent. 

"  One  of  the  most  interesting  parts  of  Yenezuela  is,  no 
doubt,  the  valley  of  Aragua.  Situated  at  a  short  distance  from 
the  coast,  and  endowed,  from  its  elevation,  with  various  cli 
mates  and  a  soil  of  unexampled  fertility,  its  agriculture  em 
braces  at  once  the  crops  suited  to  tropical  regions  and  to 
Europe.  Wheat  succeeds  well  on  the  heights  of  Victoria. 
Bounded  on  the  north  by  the  coast  chain,  on  the  south  by  a 
system  of  mountains  connected  with  the  Llanos,  the  valley  is 
shut  in  on  the  east  and  the  west  by  lines  of  hills  which  com 
pletely  close  it.  In  consequence  of  this  singular  configuration, 
the  rivers  which  rise  within  it,  having  no  outlet  to  the  ocean, 
form,  by  their  union,  the  beautiful  Lake  of  Tacarigua  or  Valen 
cia.  This  lake,  according  to  Humboldt,  is  larger  than  that  of 
Neufchatel ;  it  is  at  an  elevation  of  439  metres  [=  1,460 
English  feet]  above  the  sea,  and  its  greatest  length  does  not 
exceed  two  leagues  and  a  half  [=  seven  English  miles]. 

"  At  the  time  of  Humboldt's  visit  to  the  valley  of  Aragua, 
the  inhabitants  were  struck  by  the  gradual  diminution  which 
the  lake  had  been  undergoing  for  thirty  years.  In  fact,  by 
comparing  the  descriptions  given  by  historians  with  its  actual 
condition,  even  making  large  allowance  for  exaggeration,  it 
was  easy  to  see  that  the  level  was  considerably  depressed. 
The  facts  spoke  for  themselves.  Oviedo,  who,  toward  the 
close  of  the  sixteenth  century,  had  often  traversed  the  valley 
of  Aragua,  says  positively  that  New  Valencia  was  founded,  in 
1555,  at  half  a  league  from  the  Lake  of  Tacarigua ;  in  1800, 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOEEST  ON  SPRINGS.         203 

Humboldt  found  this  city  5,260  metres  [=  3£  English  miles] 
from  the  shore. 

"  The  aspect  of  the  soil  furnished  new  proofs.  Many  hil 
locks  on  the  plain  retain  the  name  of  islands,  which  they  more 
justly  bore  when  they  were  surrounded  by  water.  The  ground 
laid  bare  by  the  retreat  of  the  lake  was  converted  into  admi 
rable  plantations  of  cotton,  bananas,  and  sugar  cane ;  and  build 
ings  erected  near  the  lake  showed  the  sinking  of  the  water 
from  year  to  year.  In  1T96,  new  islands  made  their  appear 
ance.  An  important  military  point,  a  fortress  built  in  1740  on 
the  island  of  Cabrera,  was  now  on  a  peninsula ;  and,  finally, 
on  two  granitic  islands,  those  of  Cura  and  Cabo  Blanco,  Hum 
boldt  observed  among  the  shrubs,  some  metres  above  the 
water,  fine  sand  filled  with  helicites. 

"  These  clear  and  positive  facts  suggested  numerous  expla 
nations,  all  assuming  a  subterranean  outlet,  which  permitted 
the  discharge  of  the  water  to  the  ocean.  Humboldt  disposed 
of  these  hypotheses,  and,  after  a  careful  examination  of  the 
locality,  the  distinguished  traveller  did  not  hesitate  to  ascribe 
the  diminution  of  the  waters  of  the  lake  to  the  numerous  clear 
ings  which  had  been  made  in  the  valley  of  Aragua  within  half 
a  century.  *  *  * 

"  In  1800,  the  valley  of  Aragua  possessed  a  population  as 
dense  as  that  of  any  of  the  best-peopled  parts  of  France. 
*  Such  was  the  prosperous  condition  of  this  fine  coun 
try  when  Humboldt  occupied  the  Hacienda  de  Cura. 

"  Twenty-two  years  later,  I  explored  the  valley  of  Aragua, 
fixing  my  residence  in  the  little  town  of  Maracay.  For  some 
years  previous,  the  inhabitants  had  observed  that  the  waters 
of  the  lake  were  no  longer  retiring,  but,  on  the  contrary,  were 
sensibly  rising.  Grounds,  not  long  before  occupied  by  planta 
tions,  were  submerged.  The  islands  of  Kuevas  Aparecidas, 
which  appeared  above  the  surface  in  1796,  had  again  become 
shoals  dangerous  to  navigation.  Cabrera,  a  tongue  of  land  on 
the  north  side  of  the  valley,  was  so  narrow  that  the  least  rise 
of  the  water  completely  inundated  it.  A  protracted  north 
wind  sufficed  to  flood  the  road  between  Maracay  and  New 


204:  INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOREST   ON    SPRINGS. 

Valencia.  The  fears  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  shores  had 
so  long  entertained  were  reversed.  *  *  *  Those  who  had 
explained  the  diminution  of  the  lake  by  the  supposition  of  sub 
terranean  channels  were  suspected  of  blocking  them  up,  to 
prove  themselves  in  the  right. 

"  During  the  twenty-two  years  which  had  elapsed,  import 
ant  political  events  had  occurred.  Venezuela  no  longer  be 
longed  to  Spain.  The  peaceful  valley  of  Aragua  had  been  the 
theatre  of  bloody  struggles,  and  a  war  of  extermination  had 
desolated  these  smiling  lands  and  decimated  their  population. 
At  the  first  cry  of  independence  a  great  number  of  slaves 
found  their  liberty  by  enlisting  under  the  banners  of  the  new 
republic ;  the  great  plantations  were  abandoned,  and  the  forest, 
which  in  the  tropics  so  rapidly  encroaches,  had  soon  recovered 
a  large  proportion  of  the  soil  which  man  had  wrested  from 
it  by  more  than  a  century  of  constant  and  painful  labor. 

"  At  the  time  of  the  growing  prosperity  of  the  valley  of 
Aragua,  the  principal  affluents  of  the  lake  were  diverted,  to 
serve  for  irrigation,  and  the  rivers  were  dry  for  more  than  six 
months  of  the  year.  At  the  period  of  my  visit,  their  waters, 
no  longer  employed,  flowed  freely." 

Boussingault  proceeds  to  state  that  two  lakes  near  Ubate 
in  New  Granada,  at  an  elevation  of  2,562  metres  (=  8,500 
English  feet),  where  there  is  a  constant  temperature  of  14°  to 
16°  centigrade  [  =  57°,  61°  Fahrenheit],  had  formed  but  one, 
a  century  before  his  visit ;  that  the  waters  were  gradually 
retiring,  and  the  plantations  extending  over  the  abandoned 
bed  ;  that,  by  inquiry  of  old  hunters  and  by  examination  of 
parish  records,  he  found  that  extensive  clearings  had  been 
made  and  were  still  going  on. 

He  found,  also,  that  the  length  of  the  Lake  of  Fuquene,  in 
the  same  valley,  had,  within  two  centuries,  been  reduced  from 
ten  leagues  to  one  and  a  half,  its  breadth  from  three  leagues  to 
one.  At  the  former  period,  timber  was  abundant,  and  the 
neighboring  mountains  were  covered,  to  a  certain  height,  with 
American  oaks,  laurels,  and  other  trees  of  indigenous  species  ; 
but  at  the  time  of  his  visit  the  mountains  had  been  almost 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOKEST  ON  SPRINGS.         205 

entirely  stripped  of  their  wood,  chiefly  to  furnish  fuel  for  salt 
works.  Onr  author  adds  that  other  cases,  similar  to  those 
already  detailed,  might  be  cited,  and  he  proceeds  to  show,  by 
several  examples,  that  the  waters  of  other  lakes  in  the  same 
regions,  where  the  valleys  had  always  been  bare  of  wood,  or 
where  the  forests  had  not  been  disturbed,  had  undergone  no 
change  of  level. 

Boussingault  further  maintains  that  the  lakes  of  Switzer 
land  have  sustained  a  depression  of  level  since  the  too  prevalent 
destruction  of  the  woods,  and  arrives  at  the  general  conclusion, 
that,  "  in  countries  where  great  clearings  have  been  made, 
there  has  most  probably  been  a  diminution  in  the  living  waters 
which  flow  upon  the  surface  of  the  ground."  This  conclusion 
he  further  supports  by  two  examples  :  one,  where  a  fine  spring, 
at  the  foot  of  a  wooded  mountain  in  the  Island  of  Ascension, 
dried  up  when  the  mountain  was  cleared,  but  reappeared  when 
the  wood  was  replanted ;  the  other  at  Marmato,  in  the  province 
of  Popayan,  where  the  streams  employed  to  drive  machinery 
were  much  diminished  in  volume,  within  two  years  after  the 
clearing  of  the  heights  from  which  they  derived  their  supplies. 
This  latter  is  an  interesting  case,  because,  although  the  rain 
gauges,  established  as  soon  as  the  decrease  of  water  began  to 
excite  alarm,  showed  a  greater  fall  of  rain  for  the  second  year 
of  observation  than  the  first,  yet  there  was  no  appreciable 
increase  in  the  flow  of  the  mill  streams.  From  these  cases,  the 
distinguished  physicist  infers  that  very  restricted  local  clear 
ings  may  diminish  and  even  suppress  springs  and  brooks, 
without  any  reduction  in  the  total  quantity  of  rain. 

It  will  have  been  noticed  that  these  observations,  with  the 
exception  of  the  last  two  cases,  do  not  bear  directly  upon  the 
question  of  the  diminution  of  springs  by  clearings,  but  they 
logically  infer  it  from  the  subsidence  of  the  natural  reservoirs 
which  springs  once  filled.  There  is,  however,  no  want  of  posi 
tive  evidence  on  this  subject. 

Marschand  cites  the  following  instances  :  "  Before  the  fell 
ing  of  the  woods,  within  the  last  few  years,  in  the  valley  of  the 
Soulce,  the  Combe-es-Mounin  and  the  Little  Valley,  the  Some 


206  INFLUENCE   OF  THE  FOREST   ON   SPRINGS. 

furnished  a  regular  and  sufficient  supply  of  water  for  the  iron 
works  of  Uiiterwyl,  which  was  almost  unaffected  by  drought 
or  by  heavy  rains.  The  Some  has  now  become  a  torrent, 
every  shower  occasions  a  flood,  and  after  a  few  days  of  fine 
weather,  the  current  falls  so  low  that  it  has  been  necessary  to 
change  the  water  wheels,  because  those  of  the  old  construction 
are  no  longer  able  to  drive  the  machinery,  and  at  last  to  intro 
duce  a  steam  engine  to  prevent  the  stoppage  of  the  works  for 
want  of  water. 

"  When  the  factory  of  St.  Ursanne  was  established,  the 
river  that  furnished  its  power  was  abundant,  long  known  and 
tried,  and  had,  from  time  immemorial,  sufficed  for  the  ma 
chinery  of  a  previous  factory.  Afterward,  the  woods  near  its 
sources  were  cut.  The  supply  of  water  fell  off  in  consequence, 
the  factory  wanted  water  for  half  the  year,  and  was  at  last 
obliged  to  stop  altogether. 

"  The  spring  of  Combefoulat,  in  the  commune  of  Seleate, 
was  well  known  as  one  of  the  best  in  the  country  ;  it  was 
remarkably  abundant  and  sufficient,  in  spite  of  the  severest 
droughts,  to  supply  all  the  fountains  of  the  town  ;  but,  as  soon 
as  considerable  forests  were  felled  in  Combe-de-pre  Martin  and 
in  the  valley  of  Combefoulat,  the  famous  spring  which  lies 
below  these  woods  has  become  a  mere  thread  of  water,  and 
disappears  altogether  in  times  of  drought. 

"  The  spring  of  Yarieux,  which  formerly  supplied  the  castle 
of  Pruntrut,  lost  more  than  half  its  water  after  the  clearing  of 
Yarieux  and  Eongeoles.  These  woods  have  been  replanted, 
the  young  trees  are  growing  well,  and  with  the  woods,  the 
waters  of  the  spring  are  increasing. 

u  The  Dog  Spring  between  Pruntrut  and  Bressancourt  has 
entirely  vanished  since  the  surrounding  forests  grounds  were 
brought  under  cultivation. 

"  The  Wolf  Spring,  in  the  commune  of  Soubey,  furnishes  a 
remarkable  example  of  the  influence  of  the  woods  upon  foun 
tains.  A  few  years  ago  this  spring  did  not  exist.  At  the 
place  where  it  now  rises,  a  small  thread  of  water  was  observed 
after  very  long  rains,  but  the  stream  disappeared  with  the  rain. 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST  ON  SPRINGS.         207 

The  spot  is  in  the  middle  of  a  very  steep  pasture  inclining  to 
the  south.  Eighty  years  ago,  the  owner  of  the  land,  perceiv 
ing  that  young  firs  were  shooting  up  in  the  upper  part  of  it, 
determined  to  let  them  grow,  and  they  soon  formed  a  flourish 
ing  grove.  As  soon  as  they  were  well  grown,  a  fine  spring 
appeared  in  place  of  the  occasional  rill,  and  furnished  abun 
dant  water  in  the  longest  droughts.  For  forty  or  fifty  years, 
this  spring  was  considered  the  best  in  the  Clos  du  Doubs.  A 
few  years  since,  the  grove  was  felled,  and  the  ground  turned 
again  to  a  pasture.  The  spring  disappeared  with  the  wood, 
and  is  now  as  dry  as  it  was  ninety  years  ago."  * 

"  The  influence  of  the  forest  on  springs,"  says  Hummel, 
"  is  strikingly  shown  by  an  instance  at  Heilbronn.  The  woods 
on  the  lulls  surrounding  the  town  are  cut  in  regular  succession 
every  twentieth  year.  As  the  annual  cuttings  approach  a  cer 
tain  point,  the  springs  yield  less  water,  some  of  them  none  at 
all ;  but  as  the  young  growth  shoots  up,  they  flow  more  and 
more  freely,  and  at  length  bubble  up  again  in  all  their  original 
abundance."  f 

Piper  states  the  following  case  :  "  "Within  about  half  a  mile 
of  my  residence  there  is  a  pond  upon  which  mills  have  been 
standing  for  a  long  time,  dating  back,  I  believe,  to  the  first 
settlement  of  the  town.  These  have  been  kept  in  constant 
operation  until  within  some  twenty  or  thirty  years,  when  the 
supply  of  water  began  to  fail.  The  pond  owes  its  existence  to 
a  stream  which  has  its  source  in  the  hills  which  stretch  some 
miles  to  the  south.  Within  the  time  mentioned,  these  hills, 
which  were  clothed  with  a  dense  forest,  have  been  almost 
entirely  stripped  of  trees ;  and  to  the  wonder  and  loss  of  the 
mill  owners,  the  water  in  the  pond  has  failed,  except  in  the 
season  of  freshets ;  and,  what  was  never  heard  of  before,  the 
stream  itself  has  been  entirely  dry.  Within  the  last  ten  years 
a  new  growth  of  wood  has  sprung  up  on  most  of  the  land 
formerly  occupied  by  the  old  forest ;  and  now  the  water  runs 

*  Ueber  die  Entwaldung  der  Gebirge,  pp.  20  et  seqq. 
f  Physische  Geographic,  p.  32. 


208  THE   FOREST    IN    SUMMER   AND    IN    WINTER. 

through  the  year,  notwithstanding  the  great  droughts  of  the 
last  few  years,  going  back  from  1856." 

Dr.  Piper  quotes  from  a  letter  of  William  C.  Bryant  the 
following  remarks :  "  It  is  a  common  observation  that  onr 
summers  are  become  drier,  and  our  streams  smaller.  Take 
the  Cuyahoga  as  an  illustration.  Fifty  years  ago  large  barges 
loaded^ with  goods  went  up  and  down  that  river,  and  one  of 
the  vessels  engaged  in  the  battle  of  Lake  Erie,  in  which  the 
gallant  Perry  was  victorious,  was  built  at  Old  Portage,  six 
miles  north  of  Albion,  and  floated  down  to  the  lake.  Now,  in 
an  ordinary  stage  of  the  water,  a  canoe  or  skiff  can  hardly  pass 
down  the  stream.  Many  a  boat  of  fifty  tons  burden  has  been 
built  and  loaded  in  the  Tuscarawas,  at  New  Portage,  and 
sailed  to  New  Orleans  without  breaking  bulk.  Now,  the  river 
hardly  affords  a  supply  of  water  at  New  Portage  for  the  canal. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  other  streams — they  are  drying  up. 
And  from  the  same  cause — the  destruction  of  our  forests — our 
summers  are  growing  drier,  and  our  winters  colder."  * 

No  observer  has  more  carefully  studied  the  influence  of  the 
forest  upon  the  flow  of  the  waters,  or  reasoned  more  ably  on 
the  ascertained  phenomena  than  Cantegril.  The  facts  pre 
sented  in  the  following  case,  communicated  by  him  to  the 
Ami  des  Sciences  for  December,  1859,  are  as  nearly  conclusive 
as  any  single  instance  well  can  be  : 

"  In  the  territory  of  the  commune  of  Labruguiere,  there  is 
a  forest  of  1,834  hectares  [4,530  acres],  known  by  the  name  of 
the  Forest  of  Montaut,  and  belonging  to  that  commune.  It 
extends  along  the  northern  slope  of  the  Black  Mountains. 
The  soil  is  granitic,  the  maximum  altitude  1,243  metres  [4,140 
feet],  and  the  inclination  ranges  between  15  and  60  to  100. 

"  A  small  current  of  water,  the  brook  of  Caiman,  takes  its 
rise  in  this  forest,  and  receives  the  waters  of  two  thirds  of  its 
surface.  At  the  lower  extremity  of  the  wood  and  on  the 
stream  are  several  fulleries,  each  requiring  a  force  of  eight 
horse-power  to  drive  the  water  wheels  which  work  the  stamp- 

*  The  Trees  of  America,  pp.  50,  51. 


INFLUENCE    OF   THE   FOKEST   ON    SPRINGS.  209 

ers.  Tlie  commune  of  Labruguiere  had  been  for  a  long  time 
famous  for  its  opposition  to  forest  laws.  Trespasses  and  abuses 
of  tlie  right  of  pasturage  had  converted  the  wood  into  an 
immense  waste,  so  that  this  vast  property  now  scarcely  sufficed 
to  pay  the  expense  of  protecting  it,  and  to  furnish  the  inhab 
itants  with  a  meagre  supply  of  fuel.  While  the  forest  was 
thus  ruined,  and  the  soil  thus  bared,  the  water,  after  every 
abundant  rain,  made  an  eruption  into  the  valley,  brought 
down  a  great  quantity  of  pebbles  which  still  clog  the  current 
of  the  Caiman.  The  violence  of  the  floods  was  sometimes  such 
that  they  were  obliged  to  stop  the  machinery  for  some  time. 
During  the  summer  another  inconvenience  was  felt.  If  the 
dry  weather  continued  a  little  longer  than  usual,  the  delivery 
of  water  became  insignificant,  Each  fullery  could  for  the 
most  part  only  employ  a  single  set  of  stampers,  and  it  was  not 
unusual  to  see  the  work  entirely  suspended. 

"  After  1840,  the  municipal  authority  succeeded  in  en 
lightening  the  population  as  to  their  true  interests.  Protected 
by  a  more  watchful  supervision,  aided  by  well-managed  re 
plantation,  the  forest  has  continued  to  improve  to  the  present 
day.  In  proportion  to  the  restoration  of  the  forest,  the  condi 
tion  of  the  manufactories  has  become  less  and  less  precarious, 
and  the  action  of  the  water  is  completely  modified.  For 
example,  there  are,  no  longer,  sudden  and  violent  floods  which 
make  it  necessary  to  stop  the  machinery.  There  is  no  increase 
in  the  delivery  until  six  or  eight  hours  after  the  beginning  of 
the  rain  ;  the  floods  follow  a  regular  progression  till  they  reach 
their  maximum,  and  decrease  in  the  same  manner.  Finally, 
tlie  fulleries  are  no  longer  forced  to  suspend  work  in  summer ; 
the  water  is  always  sufficiently  abundant  to  allow  the  employ 
ment  of  two  sets  of  stampers  at  least,  and  often  even  of  three. 

"  This  example  is  remarkable  in  this  respect,  that,  all  other 
circumstances  having  remained  the  same,  the  changes  in  the 
action  of  the  stream  can  be  attributed  only  to  the  restoration 
of  the  forest — changes  which  may  be  thus  summed  up  :  dimi 
nution  of  flood  water  during  rains — increase  of  delivery  at  other 

14 


210  THE   FOKEST   IN  FEANCE. 

The  Forest  in  Winter. 

To  estimate  rightly  the  importance  of  the  forest  as  a  nat 
ural  apparatus  for  accumulating  the  water  that  falls  upon  the 
surface  and  transmitting  it  to  the  subjacent  strata,  we  must 
compare  the  condition  and  properties  of  its  soil  with  those  of 
cleared  and  cultivated  earth,  and  examine  the  consequently 
different  action  of  these  soils  at  different  seasons  of  the  year. 
The  disparity  between  them  is  greatest  in  climates  where,  as 
in  the  Northern  American  States  and  in  the  North  of  Europe, 
the  open  ground  freezes  and  remains  impervious  to  water 
during  a  considerable  part  of  the  winter ;  though,  even  in 
climates  where  the  earth  does  not  freeze  at  all,  the  woods  have 
still  an  important  influence  of  the  same  character.  The  differ 
ence  is  yet  greater  in  countries  which  have  regular  wet  and 
dry  seasons,  rain  being  very  frequent  in  the  former  period, 
while,  in  the  latter,  it  scarcely  occurs  at  all.  These  countries 
lie  chiefly  in  or  near  the  tropics,  but  they  are  not  wanting  in 
higher  latitudes ;  for  a  large  part  of  Asiatic  and  even  of 
European  Turkey  is  almost  wholly  deprived  of  summer  rains. 
In  the  principal  regions  occupied  by  European  cultivation, 
and  where  alone  the  questions  discussed  in  this  volume  are 
recognized  as  having,  at  present,  any  practical  importance, 
rain  falls  at  all  seasons,  and  it  is  to  these  regions  that,  on  this 
point  as  well  as  others,  I  chiefly  confine  my  attention. 

The  influence  of  the  forest  upon  the  waters  of  the  earth 
has  been  more  studied  in  France  than  in  any  other  part  of  the 
civilized  world,  because  that  country  has,  in  recent  times,  suf 
fered  most  severely  from  the  destruction  of  the  woods.  But 
in  the  southern  provinces  of  that  empire,  where  the  evils 
resulting  from  this  cause  are  most  sensibly  felt,  the  winters  are 
not  attended  with  much  frost,  while,  in  Northern  Europe, 
where  the  winters  are  rigorous  enough  to  freeze  the  ground  to 
the  depth  of  some  inches,  or  even  feet,  a  humid  atmosphere 
and  frequent  summer  rains  prevent  the  drying  up  of  the 
springs  observed  in  southern  latitudes  when  the  woods  are 
gone,  For  these  reasons,  the  specific  character  of  the  forest, 


THE   FOKEST   IN    WINTER. 

as  a  winter  reservoir  of  moisture  in  countries  with  a  cold  and 
dry  atmosphere,  has  not  attracted  so  much  attention  in  France 
and  Northern  Europe  as  it  deserves  in  the  United  States, 
where  an  excessive  climate  renders  that  function  of  the  woods 
more  important. 

In  New  England,  irregular  as  the  climate  is,  the  first 
autumnal  snows  usually  fall  before  the  ground  is  frozen  at  all, 
or  when  the  frost  extends  at  most  to  the  depth  of  only  a  few 
inches.  In  the  woods,  especially  those  situated  upon  the 
elevated  ridges  which  supply  the  natural  irrigation  of  the  soil 
and  feed  the  perennial  fountains  and  streams,  the  ground 
remains  covered  with  snow  during  the  winter ;  for  the  trees 
protect  the  snow  from  blowing  from  the  general  surface  into 
the  depressions,  and  new  accessions  are  received  before  the 
covering  deposited  by  the  first  fall  is  melted.  Snow  is  of  a 
color  unfavorable  for  radiation,  but,  even  when  it  is  of  consid 
erable  thickness,  it  is  not  wholly  impervious  to  the  rays  of  the 
sun,  and  for  this  reason,  as  well  as  from  the  warmth  of  lower 
strata,  the  frozen  crust,  if  one  has  been  formed,  is  soon  thawed, 
and  does  not  again  fall  below  the  freezing  point  during  the 
winter. 

The  snow  in  contact  with  the  earth  now  begins  to  melt, 
with  greater  or  less  rapidity,  according  to  the  relative  temper 
ature  of  the  earth  and  the  air,  while  the  water  resulting  from 
its  dissolution  is  imbibed  by  the  vegetable  mould,  and  carried 
off  by  infiltration  so  fast  that  both  the  snow  and  the  layers  of 
leaves  in  contact  with  it  often  seem  comparatively  dry,  when, 
in  fact,  the  under  surface  of  the  former  is  in  a  state  of  per 
petual  thaw.  'No  doubt  a  certain  proportion  of  the  snow  is 
returned  to  the  atmosphere  by  direct  evaporation,  but  in  the 
woods  it  is  partially  protected  from  the  action  of  the  sun,  and 
as  very  little  water  runs  off  in  the  winter  by  superficial  water 
courses,  except  in  rare  cases  of  sudden  thaw,  there  can  be  no 
question  that  much  the  greater  part  of  the  snow  deposited  in 
the  forest  is  slowly  melted  and  absorbed  by  the  earth. 

The  quantity  of  snow  that  falls  in  extensive  forests,  far 
from  the  open  country,  has  seldom  been  ascertained  by  direct 


212  THE  FOEEST  IN  WINTER. 

observation,  because  there  are  few  meteorological  stations  in 
such  situations.  In  the  Northeastern  border  States  of  the 
American  Union,  the  ground  in  the  deep  woods  is  covered 
with  snow  four  or  five  months,  and  the  proportion  of  water 
which  falls  in  snow  does  not  exceed  one  fifth  of  the  total  pre 
cipitation  for  the  year.*  Although,  in  the  open  grounds,  snow 
and  ice  are  evaporated  with  great  rapidity  in  clear  weather, 
even  when  the  thermometer  stands  far  below  the  freezing 
point,  the  surface  of  the  snow  in  the  woods  does  not  indicate 
much  loss  in  this  way.  Yery  small  deposits  of  snowflakes 
remain  unevaporated  in  the  forest,  for  many  days  after  snow 
let  fall  at  the  same  time  in  the  cleared  field  has  disappeared 
without  either  a  thaw  to  melt  it  or  a  wind  powerful  enough  to 
drift  it  away.  Even  when  bared  of  their  leaves,  the  trees  of  a 
wood  obstruct,  in  an  important  degree,  both  the  direct  action 
of  the  sun's  rays  on  the  snow,  and  the  movement  of  drying 
and  thawing  winds. 

Dr.  Piper  records  the  following  observations :  "  A  body  of 
snow,  one  foot  in  depth,  and  sixteen  feet  square,  was  protected 
from  the  wind  by  a  tight  board  fence  about  five  feet  high, 
while  another  body  of  snow,  much  more  sheltered  from  the 
sun  than  the  first,  six  feet  in  depth,  and  about  sixteen  feet 
square,  was  fully  exposed  to  the  wind.  When  the  thaw  came 
on,  which  lasted  about  a  fortnight,  the  larger  body  of  snow 
was  entirely  dissolved  in  less  than  a  week,  while  the  smaller 
body  was  not  wholly  gone  at  the  end  of  the  second  week. 

"  Equal  quantities  of  snow  were  placed  in  vessels  of  tho 
same  kind  and  capacity,  the  temperature  of  the  air  being  sev 
enty  degrees.  In  the  one  case,  a  constant  current  of  air  was 
kept  passing  over  the  open  vessel,  while  the  other  was  pro 
tected  by  a  cover.  The  snow  in  the  first  was  dissolved  in 
sixteen  minutes,  while  the  latter  had  a  small  unthawed  propor 
tion  remaining  at  the  end  of  eighty -five  minutes."  f 

The  snow  in  the  woods  is  protected  in  the  same  way, 
though  not  literally  to  the  same  extent  as  by  the  fence  in  one 

*  THOMPSON'S  Vermont,  appendix,  p.  8.          t  Trees  of  America,  p.  48. 


THE    FOREST    IN    WINTEK.  213 

of  these  cases  and  the  cover  in  the  other.  Little  of  the  winter 
precipitation,  therefore,  is  lost  by  evaporation,  and  as  it  slowly 
melts  at  bottom  it  is  absorbed  by  the  earth,  and  but  a  very 
small  quantity  of  water  runs  'off  from  the  surface.  The  im 
mense  importance  of  the  forest,  as  a  reservoir  of  this  stock  of 
moisture,  becomes  apparent,  when  we  consider  that  a  large 
proportion  of  the  summer  rain  either  flows  into  the  valleys 
and  the  rivers,  because  it  falls  faster  than  the  ground  can 
imbibe  it ;  or,  if  absorbed  by  the  warm  superficial  strata,  is 
evaporated  from  them  without  sinking  deep  enough  to  reach 
wells  and  springs,  which,  of  course,  depend  very  much  on 
winter  rains  and  snows  for  their  entire  supply.  This  observa 
tion,  though  specially  true  of  cleared  and  cultivated  grounds, 
is  not  wholly  inapplicable  to  the  forest,  particularly  when,  as 
is  too  often  the  case  in  Europe,  the  underwood  and  the  decay 
ing  leaves  are  removed. 

The  general  effect  of  the  forest  in  cold  climates  is  to  assim 
ilate  the  winter  state  of  the  ground  to  that  of  wrooded  regions 
under  softer  skies  ;  and  it  is  a  circumstance  well  worth  noting, 
that  in  Southern  Europe,  where  nature  has  denied  to  the  earth 
a  warm  winter-garment  of  flocculent  snow,  she  has,  by  one  of 
those  compensations  in  which  her  empire  is  so  rich,  clothed 
the  hillsides  with  umbrella  pines,  ilexes,  cork  oaks,  and  other 
trees  of  persistent  foliage,  wrhose  evergreen  leaves  afford  to 
the  soil  a  protection  analogous  to  that  which  it  derives  from 
snow  in  more  northern  climates. 

The  water  imbibed  by  the  soil  in  winter  sinks  until  it 
meets  a  more  or  less  impermeable,  or  a  saturated  stratum,  and 
then,  by  unseen  conduits,  slowly  finds  its  way  to  the  channels 
of  springs,  or  oozes  out  of  the  ground  in  drops  which  unite  in 
rills,  and  so  all  is  conveyed  to  the  larger  streams,  and  by  them 
finally  to  the  sea.  The  water,  in  percolating  through  the  vege 
table  and  mineral  layers,  acquires  their  temperature,  and  is 
chemically  affected  by  their  action,  but  it  carries  very  little 
matter  in  mechanical  suspension. 

The  process  I  have  described  is  a  slow  one,  and  %the  supply 
of  moisture  derived  from  the  snow,  augmented  by  the  rains  of 


214:         EFFECTS  OF  DESTRUCTION  OF  THE  FOREST. 

the  following  seasons,  keeps  the  forest  ground,  where  the  sur- 
face  is  level  or  but  moderately  inclined,  in  a  state  of  saturation 
through  almost  the  whole  year.  The  rivers  fed  by  springs  and 
shaded  by  woods  are  comparatively  uniform  in  volume,  in 
temperature,  and  in  chemical  composition.  Their  banks  are 
little  abraded,  nor  are  their  courses  much  obstructed  by  fallen 
timber,  or  by  earth  and  gravel  washed  down  from  the  high 
lands.  Their  channels  are  subject  only  to  slow  and  gradual 
changes,  and  they  carry  down  to  the  lakes  and  the  sea  no 
accumulation  of  sand  or  silt  to  fill  up  their  outlets,  and,  by 
raising  their  beds,  to  force  them  to  spread  over  the  low 
grounds  near  their  month.* 

In  tliis  state  of  things,  destructive  tendencies  of  all  sorts 
are  arrested  or  compensated,  and  tree,  bird,  beast,  and  fish, 
alike,  find  a  constant  uniformity  of  condition  most  favorable  to 
the  regular  and  harmonious  coexistence  of  them  all. 

General  Consequences  of  the  Destruction  of  the  Forest. 
jf 

With  the  disappearance  of  the  forest,  all  is  changed.     At 

one  season,  the  earth  parts  with  its  warmth  by  radiation  to  an 
open  sky — receives,  at  another,  an  immoderate  heat  from  the 
unobstructed  rays  of  the  sun.  Hence  the  climate  becomes 
excessive,  and  the  soil  is  alternately  parched  by  the  fervors  of 

*  Dumont,  following  Dansse,  gives  an  interesting  extract  from  the 
Misopogon  of  the  Emperor  Julian,  showing  that,  in  the  fourth  century,  the 
Seine — the  level  of  which  now  varies  to  the  extent  of  thirty  feet  between 
extreme  high  and  extreme  low  water  mark — was  almost  wholly  exempt 
from  inundations,  and  flowed  with  a  uniform  current  through  the  whole 
year.  "Ego  olim  eram  in  hihernis  apud  caram  Lutetiam,  [sic]  cnim  Galli 
Parisiorum  oppidnm  appellant,  quro  insula  est  non  magna,  in  fluvio  sita,  qui 
earn  omni  ex  parte  cingit.  Pontes  sublicii  utrinqne  ad  earn  ferunt,  rar^que 
fhivius  minuitur  ao  crcscit;  sed  qualis  restate,  talis  esso  solet  hyeme." — DCS 
Travaux  Publics  dans  lew  Rapports  avec  V Agriculture,  p.  361,  note. 

As  Julian  was  six  years  in  Gaul,  and  his  principal  residence  was  at 
Paris,  his  testimony  as  to  the  habitual  condition  of  the  Seine,  at  a  period 
when  the  provinces  where  its  sources  originate  were  well  wooded,  is  very 
Valuable. 


EFFECTS    OF   DESTRUCTION    OF   THE   FOK1C6T.  215 

summer,  and  scared  by  the  rigors  of  winter.  Bleak  winds 
sweep  imresisted  over  its  surface,  drift  away  the  snow  that 
sheltered  it  from  the  frost,  and  dry  up  its  scanty  moisture. 
The  precipitation  becomes  as  regular  as  the  temperature  ;  the 
melting  snows  and  vernal  rains,  no  longer  absorbed  by  a  loose 
and  bibulous  vegetable  mould,  rash  over  the  frozen  surface, 
and  pour  down  the  valleys  seaward,  instead  of  filling  a  reten 
tive  bed  of  absorbent  earth,  and  storing  up  a  supply  of  moist 
ure  to  feed  perennial  springs.  The  soil  is  bared  of  its  covering 
of  leaves,  broken  and  loosened  by  the  plough,  deprived  of  the 
fibrous  rootlets  which  held  it  together,  dried  and  pulverized 
by  sun  and  wind,  and  at  last  exhausted  by  new  combinations. 
The  face  of  the  earth  is  no  longer  a  sponge,  but  a  dust  heap, 
and  the  floods  which  the  waters  of  the  sky  pour  over  it  hurry 
swiftly  along  its  slopes,  carrying  in  suspension  vast  quantities 
of  earthy  particles  which  increase  the  abrading  power  and 
mechanical  force  of  the  current,  and,  augmented  by  the  sand, 
and  gravel  of  falling  banks,  fill  the  beds  of  the  streams,  divert 
them  into  new  channels  and  obstruct  their  outlets.  The  rivu 
lets,  wanting  their  former  regularity  of  supply  and  deprived  of 
the  protecting  shade  of  the  woods,  are  heated,  evaporated,  and 
thus  reduced  in  their  summer  currents,  but  swollen  to  raging 
torrents  in  autumn  and  in  spring.  From  these  causes,  there  is 
a  constant  degradation  of  the  uplands,  and  a  consequent  eleva 
tion  of  the  beds  of  watercourses  and  of  lakes  by  the  deposi 
tion  of  the  mineral  and  vegetable  matter  carried  down  by  the 
waters.  The  channels  of  great  rivers  become  unnavigable, 
their  estuaries  are  choked  up,  and  harbors  which  once  sheltered 
large  navies  are  shoaled  by  dangerous  sandbars.  The  earth, 
stripped  of  its  vegetable  glebe,  grows  less  and  less  productive, 
and,  consequently,  less  able  to  protect  itself  by  weaving  a  new 
network  of  roots  to  bind  its  particles  together,  a  new  carpet 
ing  of  turf  to  shield  it  from  wind  and  sun  and  scouring  rain. 
Gradually  it  becomes  altogether  barren.  The  washing  of  the  If 
soil  from  the  mountains  leaves  bare  ridges  of  sterile  rock,  and 
the  rich  organic  mould  which  covered  them,  now  swept  down 
into  the  dank  low  grounds,  promotes  a  luxuriance  of  aquatic 


216       GEOGRAPHICAL  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  FOREST. 

vegetation  that  breeds  fever,  and  more  insidious  forms  of 
I  tal  disease,  by  its  decay,  and  thus  the  earth  is  rendered  no 
longer  fit  for  the  habitation  of  man.* 

To  the  general  truth  of  this  sad  picture  there  are  many 
exceptions,  even  in  countries  of  excessive  climates.  Some  of 
these  are  due  to  favorable  conditions  of  surface,  of  geological 
structure,  and  of  the  distribution  of  rain  ;  in  many  others,  the 
evil  consequences  of  man's  improvidence  have  not  yet  been 
experienced,  only  because  a  sufficient  time  has  not  elapsed, 
since  the  felling  of  the  forest,  to  allow  them  to  develop  them 
selves.  But  the  vengeance  of  nature  for  the  violation  of  her 
harmonies,  though  slow,  is  sure,  and  the  gradual  deterioration 
of  soil  and  climate  in  such  exceptional  regions  is  as  certain  to 
result  from  the  destruction  of  the  woods  as  is  any  natural  effect 
to  follow  its  cause. 

In  the  vast  farrago  of  crudities  which  the  elder  Pliny's  ambi 
tion  of  encyclopaedic  attainment  and  his  ready  credulity  have 
gathered  together,  we  meet  some  judicious  observations. 
Among  these  we  must  reckon  the  remark  with  which  he 
accompanies  his  extraordinary  statement  respecting  the  pre 
vention  of  springs  by  the  growth  of  forest  trees,  though,  as  is 
usual  with  him,  his  philosophy  is  wrong.  u  Destructive  tor 
rents  are  generally  formed  when  hills  are  stripped  of  the  trees 
which  formerly  confined  and  absorbed  the  rains."  The  ab 
sorption  here  referred  to  is  not  that  of  the  soil,  but  of  the  roots, 
which,  Pliny  supposed,  drank  up  the  water  to  feed  the  growth 
of  the  trees. 

Although  this  particular  evil  effect  of  too  extensive  clear 
ing  was  so  early  noticed,  the  lesson  seems  to  have  been  soon 

*  Almost  every  narrative  of  travel  in  those  countries  which  were  the 
earliest  seats  of  civilization,  contains  evidence  of  the  truth  of  these  general 
statements,  and  this  evidence  is  presented  with  more  or  less  detail  in  most 
of  the  special  works  on  the  forest  which  I  have  occasion  to  cite.  I  may 
refer  particularly  to  HOHENSTEIN,  Der  Wald,  1860,  as  full  of  important 
facts  on  this  subject.  See  also  OAIMI,  Cenni  sulla  Imporlanza  del  Boschi, 
for  some  statistics  not  readily  found  elsewhere,  on  this  ar.d  other  topics 
connected  with  the  forest. 


LITERATURE   OF   TI1E   FOKEST.  217 

forgotten.  The  legislation  of  tlie  Middle  Ages  in  Europe  is 
full  of  absurd  provisions  concerning  the  forests,  which  sover 
eigns  sometimes  destroyed  because  they  furnished  a  retreat  for 
rebels  and  robbers,  sometimes  protected  because  they  were 
necessary  to  breed  stags  and  boars  for  the  chase,  and  some 
times  spared  with  the  more  enlightened  view  of  securing  a 
supply  of  timber  and  of  fuel  to  future  generations.*  It  wTas 
reserved  to  later  ages  to  appreciate  their  geographical  import 
ance,  and  it  is  only  in  very  recent  times,  only  in  a  few  Eu 
ropean  countries,  that  the  too  general  felling  of  the  woods  has 
been  recognized  as  the  most  destructive  among  the  many 
causes  of  the  physical  deterioration  of  the  earth. 

Condition  of  the  Forest,  and  its  Literature  in  different 
Countries. 

•  The  literature  of  the  forest,  which  in  England  and  America 
has  not  yet  become  sufficiently  extensive  to  be  known  as  a 
special  branch  of  authorship,  counts  its  thousands  of  volumes 
in  Germany,  Italy,  and  France.  It  is  in  the  latter  country, 
perhaps,  that  the  relations  of  the  woods  to  the  regular  drain 
age  of  the  soil,  and  especially  to  the  permanence  of  the  natural 
configuration  of  terrestrial  surface,  have  been  most  thoroughly 
investigated.  On  the  other  hand,  the  purely  economical  as 
pects  of  sylviculture  have  been  most  satisfactorily  expounded, 

*  Stanley,  citing  SELDEST,  De  Jure  Nalurdli,  book  vi,  and  FABKICIUS, 
Cod.  Pseudap.  V.  T.,  i,  874,  mentions  a  remarkable  Jewish  tradition  of  un 
certain  but  unquestionably  ancient  date,  "which  is  among  the  oldest  evi 
dences  of  public  respect  for  the  woods,  and  of  enlightened  views  of  their 
importance  and  proper  treatment : 

"  To  Joshua  a  fixed  Jewish  tradition  ascribed  ten  decrees,  laying  down 
precise  rules,  which  were  instituted  to  protect  the  property  of  each  tribe 
and  of  each  householder  from  lawless  depredation.  Cattle,  of  a  smaller 
kind,  were  to  be  allowed  to  graze  in  thick  woods,  not  in  thin  woods  ;  in 
woods,  no  kind  of  cattle  without  the  owner's  consent.  Sticks  and  branches 
might  he  gathered  by  any  Hebrew,  but  not  cut.  *  *  *  Woods  might  be 
pruned,  provided  they  were  not  olives  or  fruit  trees,  and  that  there  was 
sufficient  shade  in  the  place." — Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish 
Ciiurch,  part  i,  p.  271- 


218  THE   FOKEST   IN    ITALY. 

and  that  art  lias  been  most  philosophically  discussed,  and  most 
skilfully  and  successfully  practised,  in  Germany. 

The  eminence  of  Italian  theoretical  hydrographers  and  the 
great  ability  of  Italian  hydraulic  engineers  are  well  known, 
but  the  specific  geographical  importance  of  the  woods  has  not 
been  so  clearly  recognized  in  Italy  as  in  the  states  bordering 
it  on  the  north  and  west.  It  is  true  that  the  face  of  nature  has 
been  as  completely  revolutionized  by  man,  and  that  the  action 
of  torrents  has  created  as  wide  and  as  hopeless  devastation  in 
that  country  as  in  France ;  but  in  the  French  Empire  the  deso 
lation  produced  by  clearing  the  forests  is  more  recent,*  has 
been  more  suddenly  effected,  and,  therefore,  excites  a  livelier 
and  more  general  interest  than  in  Italy,  where  public  opinion 
does  not  so  readily  connect  the  effect  with  its  true  cause. 
Italy,  too,  from  ancient  habit,  employs  little  wood  in  architec 
tural  construction  ;  for  generations  she  has  maintained  no  mil 
itary  or  commercial  marine  large  enough  to  require  exhaustive 
quantities  of  timber,  f  and  the  mildness  of  her  climate  makes 

*  There  seems  to  have  been  a  tendency  to  excessive  clearing  in  Cen 
tral  and  Western,  earlier  than  in  Southeastern  France.  Wise  and  good 
Bernard  Palissy — one  of  those  persecuted  Protestants  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  whose  heroism,  virtue,  refinement,  and  taste  shine  out  in  such 
splendid  contrast  to  the  hrutality,  corruption,  grossness,  and  barbarism  of 
their  oppressors — in  the  Eecepte  Veritable,  first  printed  in  1563,  thus  com 
plains  :  "  When  I  consider  the  value  of  the  least  clump  of  trees,  or  even  of 
thorns,  I  much  marvel  at  the  great  ignorance  of  men,  who,  as  it  seemeth, 
do  nowadays  study  only  to  break  down,  fell,  and  waste  the  fair  forests 
which  their  forefathers  did  guard  so  choicely.  I  would  think  no  evil  of 
them  for  cutting  down  the  woods,  did  they  but  replant  again  some  part  of 
them  ;  but  they  care  nought  for  the  time  to  come,  neither  reck  they  of  the 
great  damage  they  do  to  their  children  which  shall  come  after  them." — 
(Emres  Completes  de  Bernard  Palissy,  1844,  p.  88. 

I  The  great  naval  and  commercial  marines  of  Venice  and  of  Genoa  must 
have  occasioned  an  immense  consumption  of  lumber  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  the  centuries  immediately  succeeding  those  commonly  embraced  in 
that  designation.  The  marine  construction  of  that  period  employed  larger 
timbers  than  the  modern  naval  architecture  of  most  commercial  coun 
tries,  but  apparently  without  a  proportional  increase  of  strength.  The  old 
modes  of  ship  building  have  been,  to  a  considerable  extent,  handed  down 


THE  FOEEST  IN  ITALY.  219 

small  demands  on  the  woods  for  fuel.  Besides  these  circum 
stances,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  sciences  of  observa 
tion  did  not  become  knowledges  of  practical  application  till 
after  the  mischief  was  already  mainly  done  and  even  forgotten 
in  Alpine  Italy,  while  its  evils  were  just  beginning  to  be- 
sensibly  felt  in  France  when  the  claims  of  natural  philosophy 
as  a  liberal  study  were  first  acknowledged  in  modern  Europe. 
The  former  political  condition  of  the  Italian  Peninsula  would 
have  effectually  prevented  the  adoption  of  a  general  system  of 
forest  economy,  however  clearly  the  importance  of  a  wTise  ad 
ministration  of  this  great  public  interest  might  have  been 
understood.  The  woods  which  controlled  and  regulated  the 
flow  of  the  river  sources  were  very  often  in  one  jurisdiction, 
the  plains  to  be  irrigated,  or  to  be  inundated  by  floods  and 
desolated  by  torrents,  in  another.  Concert  of  action  on  such  a 
subject  between  a  multitude  of  jealous  petty  sovereignties  was 
obviously  impossible,  'and  notliing  but  the  union  of  all  the 
Italian  states  under  a  single  government  can  render  practi 
cable  the  establishment  of  such  arrangements  for  the  conserva 
tion  and  restoration  of  the  forests  and  the  regulation  of  the 
flow  of  the  waters  as  are  necessary  for  the  full  development  of 
the  yet  unexhausted  resources  of  that  fairest  of  lands,  and 
even  for  the  permanent  maintenance  of  the  present  condition 
of  its  physical  geography. 

The  denudation  of  the  Central  and  Southern  Apennines 
and  of  the  Italian  declivity  of  the  "Western  Alps  began  at  a 
period  of  unknown  antiquity,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  carried  to  a  very  dangerous  length  until  the  foreign  con- 
to  the  present  day  in  the  Mediterranean,  and  an  American  or  an  English 
man  looks  with  astonishment  at  the  huge  beams  and  thick  planks  so  often 
employed  in  the  construction  of  very  small  vessels  navigating  that  sea. 
According  to  Hummel,  the  desolation  of  the  Karst,  the  high  plateau  lying 
north  of  Trieste,  now  one  of  the  most  parched  and  barren  districts  in 
Europe,  is  owing  to  the  felling  of  its  woods  to  build  the  navies  of  Venice. 
"  Where  the  miserable  peasant  of  the  Karst  now  sees  nothing  but  bare 
rock  swept  and  scoured  by  the  raging  Bora,  the  fury  of  this  wrind  was 
once  subdued  by  mighty  firs,  which  Venice  recklessly  cut  down  to  build 
her  fleets." — Pbymcfie  Geographic,  p.  82.  See  Appendix,  "No.  26. 


220  THE  FOKEST  IN  ITALY. 

quests  and  extended  commerce  of  Rome  created  a  greatly 
increased  demand  for  wood  for  the  construction  of  ships  and 
for  military  material.  The  Eastern  Alps,  the  Western  Apen 
nines,  and  the  Maritime  Alps  retained  their  forests  much  later ; 
"  but  even  here  the  want  of  wood,  and  the  injury  to  the  plains 
and  the  navigation  of  the  rivers  by  sediment  brought  down  by 
the  torrents,  led  to  some  legislation  for  the  protection  of  the 
forests,  by  the  Republic  of  Venice  in  the  fifteenth  century,  by 
that  of  Genoa  as  early  at  least  as  the  seventeenth ;  and  Mar- 
schand  states  that  the  latter  Government  passed  laws  requiring 
the  proprietors  of  mountain  lands  to  replant  the  woods.  These, 
however,  do  not  seem  to  have  been  effectually  enforced.  It  is 
very  common  in  Italy  to  ascribe  to  the  French  occupation 
under  the  first  Empire  all  the  improvements,  and  all  the  abuses 
of  recent  times,  according  to  the  political  sympathies  of  the 
individual ;  and  the  French  are  often  said  to  have  prostrated 
every  forest  which  has  disappeared  within  a  century.*  But, 
however  this  may  be,  no  energetic  system  of  repression  or 
restoration  was  adopted  by  any  of  the  Italian  states  after  the 
downfall  of  the  Empire,  and  the  taxes  on  forest  property  in 
some  of  them  were  so  burdensome  that  rural  municipalities 
sometimes  proposed  to  cede  their  common  woods  to  the  Gov 
ernment,  without  any  other  compensation  than  the  remission 
of  the  taxes  imposed  on  forest  lands.f  Under  such  circum 
stances,  woodlands  would  soon  become  disafforested,  and  where 
facilities  of  transportation  and  a  good  demand  for  timber  have 
increased  the  inducements  to  fell  it,  as  upon  the  borders  of  the 
Mediterranean,  the  destruction  of  the  forest  and  all  the  evils 
which  attend  it  have  gone  on  at  a  seriously  alarming  rate.  It 
has  even  been  calculated  that  four  tenths  of  the  area  of  the 
Ligurian  provinces  have  been  washed  away  or  rendered  inca 
pable  of  cultivation  by  the  felling  of  the  woods. ;£ 

*  Le  Alpi  cTie  cingono  V Italia,  i,  p.  367. 

t  See  the  periodical  Politccnico,  published  at  Milan,  for  the  month  of 
May,  1862,  p.  234. 

t  Annali  di  Agricoltura.  Industria  e  Commercio,  vol.  i,  p.  77. 


THE  FOKEST  IN  ENGLAND.  221 

The  damp  and  cold  climate  of  England  requires  the  main 
tenance  of  household  fires  through  a  large  part  of  the  year. 
Contrivances  for  economizing  fuel  \vere  of  later  introduction 
in  that  country  than  on  the  Continent.  The  soil,  like  the  sky, 
was,  in  general,  charged  with  humidity ;  its  natural  condition 
was  unfavorable  for  common  roads,  and  the  transportation  of. 
so  heavy  a  material  as  coal,  by  land,  from  the  remote  counties 
where  alone  it  was  mined  in  the  Middle  Ages,  was  costly  and 
difficult.  For  all  these  reasons,  the  consumption  of  wood  was 
large,  and  apprehensions  of  the  exhaustion  of  the  forests  were 
excited  at  an  early  period.  Legislation  there,  as  elsewhere, 
proved  ineffectual  to  protect  them,  and  many  authors  of  the 
sixteenth  century  express  fears  of  serious  evils  from  the  waste 
ful  economy  of  the  people  in  this  respect.  Harrison,  in  his 
curious  chapter  "  Of  Woods  and  Marishes "  in  liolinshed's 
compilation,  complains  of  the  rapid  decrease  of  the  forests,  and 
adds :  "  Howbeit  thus  much  I  dare  affirme,  that  if  woods  go 
so  fast  to  decaie  in  the  next  hundred  yeere  of  Grace,  as  they 
haue  doone  and  are  like  to  doo  in  this,  *  *  *  it  is  tc 
be  feared  that  the  fennie  bote,  broome,  turfe,  gall,  heath,  firze, 
brakes,  whiimes,  ling,  dies,  hassacks,  flags,  straw,  sedge,  reed, 
rush,  and  also  seacole,  will  be  good  merchandize  euen  in  the 
citie  of  London,  whereunto  some  of  them  euen  now  haue  gotten 
readie  passage,  and  taken  vp  their  innes  in  the  greatest  mer 
chants'  parlours.  *  *  *  I  would  wish  that  I  might  line  no 
longer  than  to  see  foure  things  in  this  land  reformed,  that  is  : 
the  want  of  discipline  in  the  church  :  the  couetous  dealing  of 
most  of  our  merchants  in  the  preferment  of  the  commodities 
of  other  countries,  and  hinderance  of  their  owne  :  the  holding 
of  faires  and  markets  vpon  the  sundaie  to  be  abolished  and 
referred  to  the  wednesdaies :  and  that  euerie  man,  in  whatso- 
euer  part  of  the  champaine  soile  enioieth  fortie  acres  of  land, 
and  vpwards,  after  that  rate,  either  by  free  deed,  copie  hold, 
or  fee  farme,  might  plant  one  acre  of  wood,  or  sowe  the  same.< 
with  oke  mast,  hasell,  beech,  and  sufficient  prouision  be  made 
that  it  may  be  cherished  and  kept.  But  I  feare  me  that  I 
should  then  line  too  long,  and  so  long,  that  I  should  either  bo 


222  THE   FOKEST   IN   ENGLAND. 

wearie  of  the  world,  or  the  world  of  me."  *  Evelyn's  "  Silva," 
the  first  edition  of  which  appeared  in  1664,  rendered  an  ex 
tremely  important  service  to  the  cause  of  the  woods,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  the  ornamental  plantations  in  which  England 
far  surpasses  all  other  countries,  are,  in  some  measure,  the 


*  UOLIXSHED,  reprint  of  1807,  i,  pp.  357,  358.  It  is  evident  from  tin 
passage,  and  from  another  on  page  397  of  the  same  volume,  that,  though 
sea  coal  was  largely  exported  to  the  Continent,  it  had  not  yet  come  into  gen 
eral  use  in  England.  It  is  a  question  of  much  interest,  when  coal  was  first 
employed  in  England  for  fuel.  I  can  find  no  evidence  that  it  was  used  as  a 
combustible  until  more  than  a  century  after  the  Norman  conquest.  It  has 
been  said  that  it  was  known  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  population,  but  I  am  ac 
quainted  with  no  passage  in  the  literature  of  that  people  which  proves 
this.  The  dictionaries  explain  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  grccfa  by  sea  coal. 
I  have  met  with  this  word  in  no  Anglo-Saxon  work,  except  in  the  Chron 
icle,  A.  D.  852,  from  a  manuscript  certainly  not  older  than  the  twelfth  cen 
tury,  and  in  that  passage  it  may  as  probably  mean  peat  as  coal,  and  quite 
as  probably  something  else  as  either.  Coal  is  not  mentioned  in  King  Al 
fred's  Bede,  in  Glanville,  or  in  Robert  of  Gloucester,  though  all  these 
writers  speak  of  jet  as  found  in  England,  and  are  full  in  their  enumeration 
of  the  mineral  products  of  the  island. 

England  was  anciently  remarkable  for  its  forests,  but  Caesar  says  it 
wanted  ihefagus  and  the  dbies.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  fagus  means 
the  beech,  which,  as  the  remains  in  the  Danish  peat  mosses  show,  is  a  tree 
of  late  introduction  into  Denmark,  where  it  succeeded  the  fir,  a  tree  not  now 
native  to  that  country.  The  succession  of  forest  crops  seems  to  have  been 
the  same  in  England ;  for  Harrison,  p.  359,  speaks  of  the  "  great  store  of 
firre"  found  lying  "  at  their  whole  lengths"  in  the  "fens  and  marises" 
of  Lancashire  and  other  counties,  where  not  even  bushes  grew  in  his  time. 
We  cannot  be  sure  what  species  of  evergreen  Ceesar  intended  by  dbies. 
The  popular  designations  of  spike-leaved  trees  are  always  more  vague  and 
uncertain  in  their  application  than  those  of  broad-leaved  trees.  Pinus, 
pine,  has  been  very  loosely  employed  even  in  botanical  nomenclature,  and 
Kiefer,  Fichte,  and  Tanne  are  often  confounded  in  German. — BOSSMASSLEB, 
Der  Wald,  pp.  256,  289,  324.  If  it  were  certain  that  the  dbies  of  Csesar 
was  the  fir  formerly  and  still  found  in  peat  mosses,  and  that  he  was  right 
in  denying  the  existence  of  the  beech  in  England  in  his  time,  the  observa 
tion  would  be  very  important,  because  it  would  fix  a  date  at  which  the  fir 
had  become  extinct,  and  the  beech  had  not  yet  appeared  in  the  island. 

The  English  oak,  though  strong  and  durable,  was  not  considered  gen 
erally  suitable  for  finer  work  in  the  sixteenth  century.  There  were,  how- 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOKE8T   ON   TUB   WATERS.  223 

fruit  of  Evelyn's  enthusiasm.  In  England,  however,  arboricul 
ture,  the  planting  and  nursing  of  single  trees,  has,  until 
recently,  been  better  understood  than  sylviculture,  the  sowing 
and  training  of  the  forest.  But  this  latter  branch  of  rural 
improvement  is  now  pursued  on  a  very  considerable  scale, 
though,  so  far  as  I  know,  not  by  the  National  Government 

TIw  Influence  of  the  Forest  on  Inundations. 

Besides  the  climatic  question,  which  I  have  already  suffi 
ciently  discussed,  and  the  obvious  inconveniences  of  a  scanty 
supply  of  charcoal,  of  fuel,  and  of  timber  for  architectural  and 
naval  construction  and  for  the  thousand  other  uses  to  which 
wood  is  applied  in  rural  and  domestic  economy,  and  in  the 

ever,  exceptions.  "  Of  all  in  Essex,"  observes  HAEUISON,  Holinslied,  i,  p. 
357,  "  that  growing  in  Bardfield  parke  is  the  finest  for  ioiners  craft :  for 
oftentimes  haue  I  seene  of  their  workes  made  of  that  oke  so  fine  and  faire, 
as  most  of  the  wainescot  that  is  brought  hither  out  of  Danske";  for  our 
wainescot  is  not  made  in  England.  Yet  diuerse  haue  assaied  to  deale 
without  [with  our]  okes  to  that  end,  but  not  with  so  good  successe  as 
they  haue  hoped,  bicause  the  ab  or  iuice  will  not  so  soone  be  remoued 
and  cleane  drawne  out,  which  some  attribute  to  want  of  time  in  the  salt 
water." 

This  passage  is  also  of  interest  as  showing  that  soaking  in  salt  water,  as 
a  mode  of  seasoning,  was  practised  in  Harrison's  time. 

But  the  importation  of  wainscot,  or  boards  for  ceiling,  panelling,  and 
otherwise  finishing  rooms,  which  was  generally  of  oak,  commenced  three 
centuries  before  the  time  of  Harrison.  On  page  204  of  the  Liber  Albus — a 
book  which  could  have  been  far  more  valuable  if  the  editor  had  given  us 
the  texts,  with  his  learned  notes,  instead  of  a  translation — mention  is  made 
of  "  squared  oak  timber,"  brought  in  from  the  country  by  carts,  and  of 
course  of  domestic  growth,  as  free  of  city  duty  or  octroi,  and  of  "  planks 
of  oak  "  coming  in  in  the  same  way  as  paying  one  plank  a  cartload.  But 
in  the  chapter  on  the  "  Customs  of  Billyngesgate,"  pp.  208,  209,  relating  to 
goods  imported  from  foreign  countries,  a  duty  of  one  halfpenny  is  imposed 
on  every  hundred  of  boards  called  "  weynscotte,"  and  of  one  penny 
on  every  hundred  of  boards  called  "  Rygholt."  The  editor  explains 
"Rygholt  "as  "wood  of  Riga."  This  was  doubtless  pine  or  fir.  The 
year  in  which  these  provisions  were  made  does  not  appear,  but  Ihey 
belong  to  the  reign  of  Henry  III. 


224:  INFLUENCE    OF   THE   FOREST   ON   INUNDATIONS. 

various  industrial  processes  of  civilized  life,  the  attention  of 
French  foresters  and  public  economists  has  been  specially 
drawn  to  three  points,  namely :  the  influence  of  the  forests  on 
the  permanence  and  regular  flow  of  springs  or  natural  foun 
tains  ;  on  inundations  by  the  overflow  of  rivers ;  and  on  the 
abrasion  of  soil  and  the  transportation  of  earth,  gravel,  pebbles, 
and  even  of  considerable  masses  of  rock,  from  higher  to  lower 
levels,  by  torrents.  There  are,  however,  connected  with  this 
general  subject,  several  other  topics  of  minor  or  strictly  local 
interest,  or  of  more  uncertain  character,  which  I  shall  have 
occasion  more  fully  to  speak  of  hereafter. 

The  first  of  these  three  principal  subjects — the  influence 
of  the  woods  on  springs  and  other  living  waters — has  been 
already  considered ;  and  if  the  facts  stated  in  that  discussion 
are  well  established,  and  the  conclusions  I  have  drawn  from 
them  are  logically  sound,  it  would  seem  to  follow,  as  a  neces 
sary  corollary,  that  the  action  of  the  forest  is  as  important  in 
diminishing  the  frequency  and  violence  of  river  floods,  as  in 
securing  the  permanence  and  equability  of  natural  fountains ; 
for  any  cause  which  promotes  the  absorption  and  accumula 
tion  of  the  water  of  precipitation  by  the  superficial  strata  of 
the  soil,  to  be  slowly  given  out  by  infiltration  and  percolation, 
must,  by  preventing  the  rapid  flow  of  surface  water  into  the 
natural  channels  of  drainage,  tend  to  check  the  sudden  rise  of 
rivers,  and,  consequently,  the  overflow  of  their  banks,  which 
i  constitutes  what  is  called  inundation.  The  mechanical  re 
sistance,  too,  offered  by  the  trunks  of  trees  and  of  undergrowth 
to  the  flow  of  water  over  the  surface,  tends  sensibly  to  retard 
the  rapidity  of  its  descent  down  declivities,  and  to  divert  and 
divide  streams  which  may  have  already  accumulated  from 
smaller  threads  of  water/- 

*  In  a  letter  addressed  to  the  Minister  of  Public  Works,  after  the 
terrible  inundations  of  1857,  the  Emperor  thus  happily  expressed  him 
self:  "Before  we  seek  the  remedy  for  an  evil,  we  inquire  into  its  cause. 
Whence  come  the  sudden  floods  of  our  rivers  ?  From  the  water  which 
falls  on  the  mountains,  not  from  that  which  falls  on  the  plains.  The 
waters  which  fall  on  our  fields  produce  but  few  rivulets,  but  those  which 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE   FOREST   ON   INUNDATIONS.  225 

Inundations  are  produced  by  the  insufficiency  of  the  nat-  , 
ural  channels  of  rivers  to  carry  off  the  waters  of  their  basins  as  ! 
fast  as  those  waters  flow  into  them.  In  accordance  with  the  J 
usual  economy  of  nature,  we  should  presume  that  she  had 
everywhere  provided  the  means  of  discharging,  without  dis 
turbance  of  her  general  arrangements  or  abnormal  destruction 
of  her  products,  the  precipitation  which,  she  sheds  upon  the 
face  of  the  earth.  Observation  confirms  this  presumption,  at 
least  in  the  countries  to  which  I  confine  my  inquiries  ;  for,  so 
far  as  we  know  the  primitive  conditions  of  the  regions  brought 
under  human  occupation  within  the  historical  period,  it  ap 
pears  that  the  overflow  of  river  banks  was  much  less  frequent 
and  destructive  than  at  the  present  day,  or,  at  least,  that  rivers 
rose  and  fell  less  suddenly  before  man  had  removed  the  natural 
checks  to  the  too  rapid  drainage  of  the  basins  in  which  their 
tributaries  originate.  The  banks  of  the  rivers  and  smaller 
streams  in  the  North  American  colonies  were  formerly  little 
abraded  by  the  currents.  Even  now  the  trees  come  down 
almost  to  the  water's  edge  along  the  rivers,  in  the  larger  for 
ests  of  the  United  States,  and  the  surface  of  the  streams  seems 
liable  to  no  great  change  in  level  or  in  rapidity  of  current.  A 
circumstance  almost  conclusive  as  to  the  regularity  of  flow  in 
forest  rivers,  is  that  they  do  not  form  large  sedimentary  de 
posits,  at  their  points  of  discharge  into  lakes  or  larger  streams, 
such  accumulations  beginning,  or  at  least  advancing  far  more 
rapidly,  after  the  valleys  are  cleared. 

In  the  Northern  United  States,  although  inundations  are 

<*  O 

sometimes  produced  in  the  height  of  summer  by  heavy  rains, 
it  will  be  found  generally  true  that  the  most  rapid  rise  of  the 

fall  on  our  roofs  and  are  collected  in  the  gutters,  form  small  streams  at 
one?.     Xo\v,  the  roofs  are  mountains — the  gutters  are  valleys." 

"  To  continue  the  comparison,"  observes  D'Hericourt,  "  roofs  are 
smooth  and  impermeable,  and  the  rain  water  pours  rapidly  off  from  their 
surfaces  ;  but  this  rapidity  of  flow  would  be  greatly  diminished  if  the  roofs 
were  carpeted  with  mosses  and  grasses ;  more  still,  if  they  were  covered 
with  dry  leaves,  little  shrubs,  strewn  branches,  and  other  impediments — in 
short,  if  they  were  wooded.'' — Annakt  Forestttres,  Dec.,  1857,  p.  311. 
15 


226  FLOODS    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES. 

waters,  and,  of  course,  the  most  destructive  "  freshets,"  as  they 
are  called  in  America,  are  produced  by  the  sudden  dissolution 
of  the  snow  before  the  open  ground  is  thawed  in  the  spring. 
It  frequently  happens  that  a  powerful  thaw  sets  in  after  a  long 
period  of  frost,  and  the  snow  which  had  been  months  in  accu 
mulating  is  dissolved  and  carried  off  in  a  few  hours.  "When 

C3 

the  snow  is  deep,  it,  to  use  a  popular  expression,  "  takes  the 
frost  out  of  the  ground  "  in  the  woods,  and,  if  it  lies  long 
enough,  in  the  fields  also.  But  the  heaviest  snows  usually  fall 
after  midwinter,  and  are  succeeded  by  warm  rains  or  sunshine, 
which  dissolve  the  snow  on  the  cleared  land  before  it  has  had 
time  to  act  upon  the  frost-bound  soil  beneath  it.  In  this  case, 
the  snow  in  the  woods  is  absorbed  as  fast  as  it  melts,  by  the 
soil  it  has  protected  from  freezing,  and  does  not  materially  con 
tribute  to  swell  the  current  of  the  rivers.  If  the  mild  weather, 
in  which  great  snowstorms  usually  occur,  does  not  continue 
and  become  a  regular  thaw,  it  is  almost  sure  to  be  followed  by 
drifting  winds,  and  the  inequality  with  which  they  distribute 
the  snow  leaves  the  ridges  comparatively  bare,  while  the  de 
pressions  are  often  filled  with  drifts  to  the  height  of  many  feet. 
The  knolls  become  frozen  to  a  great  depth  ;  succeeding  partial 
thaws  melt  the  surface  snow,  and  the  water  runs  down  into  the 
furrows  of  ploughed  fields,  and  other  artificial  and  natural  hol 
lows,  and  ihen.  often  freezes  to  solid  ice.  In  this  state  of  things, 
almost  the  entire  surface  of  the  cleared  land  is  impervious  to 
water,  and  from  the  absence  of  trees  and  the  general  smooth 
ness  of  the  ground,  it  offers  little  mechanical  resistance  to 
superficial  currents.  If,  under  these  circumstances,  warm 
weather  accompanied  by  rain  occurs,  the  rain  and  melted 
snow  are  swiftly  hurried  to  the  bottom  of  the  valleys  and 
gathered  to  raging  torrents. 

It  ousfht  further  to  be  considered  that,  though  the  lighter 

c^  O  O 

ploughed  soils  readily  imbibe  a  great  deal  of  water,  yet  the 
grass  lands,  and  all  the  heavy  and  tenacious  earths,  absorb  it 
in  much  smaller  quantities,  and  less  rapidly  than  the  vegetable 
mould  of  the  forest.  Pasture,  meadow,  and  clayey  soils,  taken 
together,  greatly  predominate  over  the  sandy  ploughed  fields, 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREST  ON  INUNDATIONS.       227 

in  all  large  agricultural  districts,  and  hence,  even  if,  in  the 
case  we  are  supposing,  the  open  ground  chance  to  have  been 
thawed  before  the  melting  of  the  snow  which  covers  it,  it  is 
already  saturated  with  moisture,  or  very  soon  becomes  so,  and, 
of  course,  cannot  relieve  the  pressure  by  absorbing  more  water. 
The  consequence  is  that  the  face  of  the  country  is  suddenly 
flooded  with  a  quantity  of  melted  snow  and  rain  equivalent  to 
a  fall  of  six  or  eight  inches  of  the  latter,  or  even  more.  This 
runs  unobstructed  to  rivers  often  still  bound  with  thick  ice, 
and  thus  inundations  of  a  fearfully  devastating  character  are 
produced.  The  ice  bursts,  from  the  hydrostatic  pressure  from 
below,  or  is  violently  torn  up  by  the  current,  and  is  swept  by 
the  impetuous  stream,  in  large  masses  and  with  resistless  fury, 
against  banks,  bridges,  dams,  and  mills  erected  near  them. 
The  bark  of  the  trees  along  the  rivers  is  often  abraded,  at  a 
height  of  many  feet  above  the  ordinary  water  level,  by  cakes 
of  floating  ice,  which  are  at  last  stranded  by  the  receding  flood 
on  meadow  or  ploughland,  to  delay,  by  their  chilling  influence, 
the  advent  of  the  tardy  spring. 

The  surface  of  a  forest,  in  its  natural  condition,  can  never 
pour  forth  such  deluges  of  water  as  flow  from  cultivated  soil. 
Humus,  or  vegetable  mould,  is  capable  of  absorbing  almost 
twice  its  own  weight  of  water.  The  soil  in  a  forest  of  decid 
uous  foliage  is  composed  of  humus,  more  or  less  unmixed,  to 
the  depth  of  several  inches,  sometimes  even  of  feet,  and  this 
stratum  is  usually  able  to  imbibe  all  the  water  possibly  result 
ing  from  the  snow  which  at  any  one  time  covers  it.  But  the 
vegetable  mould  does  not  cease  to  absorb  water  when  it  be 
comes  saturated,  for  it  then  gives  off  a  portion  of  its  moisture 
to  the  mineral  earth  below,  and  thus  is  ready  to  receive  a  new 
supply ;  and,  besides,  the  bed  of  leaves  not  yet  converted  to 
mould  takes  up  and  retains  a  very  considerable  proportion  of 
snow  water,  as  well  as  of  rain. 

In  the  warm  climates  of  Southern  Europe,  as  I  have 
already  said,  the  functions  of  the  forest,  so  far  as  the  disposal 
of  the  water  of  precipitation  is  concerned,  are  essentially  the 
same  at  all  seasons,  and  are  analogous  to  those  which  it  per- 


228  OBSERVATIONS    OF   BELGKAND. 

forms  in  the  Northern  United  States  in  summer.  Hence,  in 
the  former  countries,  the  winter  floods  have  not  the  character 
istics  which  mark  them  in  the  latter,  nor  is  the  conservative 
influence  of  the  woods  in  winter  relatively  so  important, 
though  it  is  equally  unquestionable. 

If  the  summer  floods  in  the  United  States  are  attended 
with  less  pecuniary  damage  than  those  of  the  Loire  and  other 
rivers  of  France,  the  Po  and  its  tributaries  in  Italy,  the  Emme 
and  her  sister  torrents  which  devastate  the  valleys  of  Switzer 
land,  it  is  partly  because  the  banks  of  American  rivers  are  not 
yet  lined  with  towns,  their  shores  and  the  bottoms  which  skirt 
them,  not  yet  covered  with  improvements  whose  cost  is  counted 
by  millions,  and,  consequently,  a  smaller  amount  of  property 
is  exposed  to  injury  by  inundation.  But  the  comparative 
exemption  of  the  American  people  from  the  terrible  calamities 

.  which  the  overflow  of  rivers  has  brought  on  some  of  the  fairest 
portions  of  the  Old  World,  is,  in  a  still  greater  degree,  to  be 
ascribed  to  the  fact  that,  with  all  our  thoughtless  improvidence, 
we  have  not  yet  bared  all  the  sources  of  our  streams,  not  yet 
overthrown  all  the  barriers  which  nature  has  erected  to  restrain 
her  own  destructive  energies.  Let  us  be  wise  in  time,  and 
profit  by  the  errors  of  our  older  brethren  ! 

The  influence  of  the  forest  in  preventing  inundations  has 
been  very  generally  recognized,  both  as  a  theoretical  inference 
and  as  a  fact  of  observation  ;  but  Belgrand  and  his  commen 
tator  Yalles  have  deduced  an  opposite  result  from  various  facts 
of  experience  and  from  scientific  considerations.  They  con 
tend  that  the  superficial  drainage  is  more  regular  from  c]  eared 
than  from  wooded  ground,  and  that  clearing  diminishes  rather 
than  augments  the  intensity  of  inundations.  Neither  of  these 
conclusions  is  warranted  by  their  data  or  their  reasoning,  and 

.  they  rest  partly  upon  facts,  which,  truly  interpreted,  are  not 
inconsistent  with  the  received  opinions  on  these  subjects, 
partly  upon  assumptions  which  are  contradicted  by  experience. 
Two  of  these  latter  are,  first,  that  the  fallen  leaves  in  the  for 
est  constitute  an  impermeable  covering  of  the  soil  over,  not 
through,  which  the  water  of  rains  and  of  melting  snows  flows 


OBSERVATIONS    OF   BELGRAND.  229 

off,  and  secondly,  that  the  roots  of  trees  penetrate  and  choke 
up  the  fissures  in  the  rocks,  so  as  to  impede  the  passage  of 
water  through  channels  which  nature  has  provided  for  its 
descent  to  lower  strata. 

As  to  the  first  of  these,  we  may  appeal  to  familiar  facts 
within  the  personal  knowledge  of  every  man  acquainted  with 
the  operations  of  sylvan  nature.  I  have  before  me  a  letter 
from  an  acute  and  experienced  observer,  containing  this  para 
graph  :  "  I  think  that  rain  water  does  not  ever,  except  in  very 
trifling  quantities,  flow  over  the  leaves  in  the  woods  in  sum 
mer  or  autumn.  Water  runs  over  them  only  in  the  spring, 
when  they  are  pressed  down  smoothly  and  compactly,  a  state 
in  which  they  remain  only  until  they  are  dry,  when  shrink 
age  and  the  action  of  the  wind  soon  roughen  the  surface  so  as 
effectually  to  stop,  by  absorption,  all  flow  of  water."  I  have 
observed  that  when  a  sudden  frost  succeeds  a  thaw  at  the  close 
of  the  winter  after  the  snow  has  principally  disappeared,  the 
water  in  and  between  the  layers  of  leaves  sometimes  freezes 
into  a  solid  crust,  which  allows  the  flow  of  water  over  it.  But 
this  occurs  only  in  depressions  and  on  a  very  small  scale  ;  and 
the  ice  thus  formed  is  so  soon  dissolved  that  no  sensible  effect 
is  produced  on  the  escape  of  water  from  the  general  surface. 

As  to  the  influence  of  roots  upon  drainage,  I  believe  there 
is  no  doubt  that  they,  independently  of  their  action  as  absorb 
ents,  mechanically  promote  it.  Not  only  does  the  water  of 
the  soil  follow  them  downward,*  but  their  swelling  growth 
powerfully  tends  to  enlarge  the  crevices  of  rock  into  which 
they  enter ;  and  as  the  fissures  in  rocks  are  longitudinal,  not 
mere  circular  orifices,  every  line  of  additional  width  gained  by 
the  growth  of  roots  within  them  increases  the  area  of  the  crev- 

*  "  The  roots  of  vegetables,"  says  D'Hericourt,  "  perform  the  office  of 
a  perpendicular  drainage  analogous  to  that  which  has  been  practised  with 
success  in  Holland  and  in  some  parts  of  the  British  Islands.  This  system 
consists  in  driving  down  three  or  four  thousand  stakes  upon  a  hectare  ; 
the  rain  water  niters  down  along  the  stakes,  and,  in  certain  cases,  as 
favorable  results  are  obtained  by  this  method  as  by  horizontal  drains." — 
Annales  Forestleres,  1857,  p.  312. 


230  EFFECTS    OF    INUNDATIONS. 

ice  in  proportion  to  its  length.  Consequently,  the  widening 
of  a  fissure  to  the  extent  of  one  inch  might  give  an  additional 
drainage  equal  to  a  square  foot  of  open  tubing. 

The  observations  and  reasonings  of  Belgrand  and  Yalles, 
though  their  conclusions  have  not  been  accepted  by  many,  are 
very  important  in  one  point  of  view.  These  writers  insist 
much  on  the  necessity  of  taking  into  account,  in  estimating 
the  relations  between  precipitation  and  evaporation,  the  ab 
straction  of  water  from  the  surface  and  surface  currents,  by 
absorption  and  infiltration — an  element  unquestionably  of 
great  value,  but  hitherto  much  neglected  by  meteorological 
inquirers,  who  have  very  often  reasoned  as  if  the  surface  earth 
were  either  impermeable  to  water,  or  already  saturated  with 
it ;  wrhereas,  in  fact,  it  is  a  sponge,  always  imbibing  humidity 
and  always  giving  it  off,  not  by  evaporation  only,  but  by  infil 
tration  and  percolation. 

The  destructive  effects  of  inundations  considered  simply  as 
a  mechanical  power  by  which  life  is  endangered,  crops  de 
stroyed,  and  the  artificial  constructions  of  man  overthrown, 
are  very  terrible.  Thus  far,  however,  the  flood  is  a  temporary 
and  by  no  means  an  irreparable  evil,  for  if  its  ravages  end  here, 
the  prolific  powers  of  nature  and  the  industry  of  man  soon 
restore  what  had  been  lost,  and  the  face  of  the  earth  no  longer 
shows  traces  of  the  deluge  that  had  overwhelmed  it.  Inunda 
tions  have  even  their  compensations.  The  structures  they 
destroy  are  replaced  by  better  and  more  secure  erections,  and 
if  they  sweep  off  a  crop  of  corn,  they  not  unfrequently  leave 
behind  them,  as  they  subside,  a  fertilizing  deposit  which  en 
riches  the  exhausted  field  for  a  succession  of  seasons.*  If, 

*  The  productiveness  of  Egypt  has  been  attributed  too  exclusively  to  the 
fertilizing  effects  of  the  slime  deposited  by  the  inundations  of  the  Nile ; 
for  in  that  climate  a  liberal  supply  of  water  would  produce  good  crops  on 
almost  any  ordinary  sand,  while,  without  water,  the  richest  soil  would 
yield  nothing.  The  sediment  deposited  annually  is  but  a  very  small  frac 
tion  of  an  inch  in  thickness.  It  is  alleged  that  in  quantity  it  would  be 
hardly  sufficient  for  a  good  top  dressing,  and  that  in  quality  it  is  not  chem 
ically  distinguishable  from  the  soil  inches  or  feet  below  the  surface.  Bufc 


DESTRUCTIVE   ACTION    OF    TOERENTB.  231 

then,  the  too  rapid  flow  of  the  surface  waters  occasioned  no 
other  evil  than  to  produce,  once  in  ten  years  upon  the  average, 
an  inundation  which  should  destroy  the  harvest  of  the  low 
grounds  along  the  rivers,  the  damage  would  be  too  inconsid 
erable,  and  of  too  transitory  a  character,  to  warrant  the  incon 
veniences  and  the  expense  involved  in  the  measures  which  the 
most  competent  judges  in  many  parts  of  Europe  believe  the 
respective  governments  ought  to  take  to  obviate  it. 

Destructive  Action  of  Torrents. 

But  the  great,  the  irreparable,  the  appalling  mischiefs 
which  have  already  resulted,  and  threaten  to  ensue  on  a  still 
more  extensive  scale  hereafter,  from  too  rapid  superficial  drain 
age,  are  of  a  properly  geographical  character,  and  consist 
primarily  in  erosion,  displacement,  and  transportation  of  the 
superficial  strata,  vegetable  and  mineral— of  the  integuments, 
so  to  speak,  with  which  nature  has  clothed  the  skeleton  frame 
work  of  the  globe.  It  is  difficult  to  convey  by  description  an 
idea  of  the  desolation  of  the  regions  most  exposed  to  the  rav 
ages  of  torrent  and  of  flood  ;  and  the  thousands,  who,  in  these 
days  of  travel,  are  whirled  by  steam  near  or  even  through  the 
theatres  of  these  calamities,  have  but  rare  and  imperfect  oppor 
tunities  of  observing  the  destructive  causes  in  action.  Still 
more  rarely  can  they  compare  the  past  with  the  actual  condi 
tion  of  the  provinces  in  question,  and  trace  the  progress  of 
their  conversion  from  forest-crowned  hills,  luxuriant  pasture 


to  deny,  as  some  writers  have  done,  that  the  slime  has  any  fertilizing  prop 
erties  at  all,  is  as  great  an  error  as  the  opposite  one  of  ascribing  all  the 
agricultural  wealth  of  Egypt  to  that  single  cause  of  productiveness.  Fine 
soils  deposited  by  water  are  almost  uniformly  rich  in  all  climates ;  those 
brought  down  by  rivers,  carried  out  into  salt  water,  and  then  returned 
again  by  the  tide,  seem  to  be  more  permanently  fertile  than  any  others. 
The  polders  of  the  Netherland  coast  are  of  this  character,  and  the  meadows 
in  Lincolnshire,  which  have  been  covered  with  slime  by  warping,  as  it  is 
called,  or  admitting  water  over  them  at  high  tide,  are  remarkably  pro 
ductive.  See  Appendix,  No.  27. 


232  DANGER   OF   TOKKENTS   IN    THE    UNITED    STATES. 

grounds,  and  abundant  cornfields  and  vineyards  well  watered 
by  springs  and  fertilizing  rivulets,  to  bald  mountain  ridges, 
rocky  declivities,  and  steep  earth  banks  furrowed  by  deep 
ravines  with  beds  now  dry,  now  filled  by  torrents  of  fluid 
mud  and  gravel  hurrying  down  to  spread  themselves  over  the 
plain,  and  dooming  to  everlasting  barrenness  the  once  produc 
tive  fields.  In  traversing  such  scenes,  it  is  difficult  to  resist 
the  impression  that  nature  pronounced  the  curse  of  perpetual 
sterility  and  desolation  upon  these  sublime  but  fearful  wastes, 
difficult  to  believe  that  they  were  once,  and  but  for  the  folly 
of  man  might  still  be,  blessed  with  all  the  natural  advantages 
which  Providence  has  bestowed  upon  the  most  favored  climes. 
But  the  historical  evidence  is  conclusive  as  to  the  destructive 
changes  occasioned  by  the  agency  of  man  upon  the  flanks  of 
the  Alps,  the  Apennines,  the  Pyrenees,  and  other  mountain 
ranges  in  Central  and  Southern  Europe,  and  the  progress  of 
physical  deterioration  has  been  so  rapid  that,  in  some  local 
ities,  a  single  generation  has  witnessed  the  beginning  and  the 
end  of  the  melancholy  revolution. 

It  is  certain  that  a  desolation,  like  that  which  has  over 
whelmed  many  once  beautiful  and  fertile  regions  of  Europe, 
awaits  an  important  part  of  the  territory  of  the  United  States, 
and  of  other  comparatively  new  countries  over  which  European 
civilization  is  now  extending  its  sway,  unless  prompt  measures 
are  taken  to  check  the  action  of  destructive  causes  already  in 
operation.  It  is  vain  to  expect  that  legislation  can  do  any 
thing  effectual  to  arrest  the  progress  of  the  evil  in  those  coun 
tries,  except  so  far  as  the  state  is  still  the  proprietor  of  exten 
sive  forests.  Woodlands  which  have  passed  into  private  hands 
will  everywhere  be  managed,  in  spite  of  legal  restrictions,  upon 
the  same  economical  principles  as  other  possessions,  and  every 
proprietor  will,  as  a  general  rule,  fell  his  woods,  unless  he 
believes  that  it  will  be  for  his  pecuniary  interest  to  preserve 
them.  Few  of  the  new  provinces  which  the  last  three  cen 
turies  have  brought  under  the  control  of  the  European  race, 
would  tolerate  any  interference  by  the  law-making  power  with 
what  they  regard  as  the  most  sacred  of  civil  rights — the  right, 


LEGISLATION   ON   THE   FOREST.  233 

namely,  of  every  man  to  do  what  lie  will  with  his  own.  In  the 
Old  World,  even  in  France,  whose  people,  of  all  European 
nations,  love  Lest  to  be  governed  and  are  least  annoyed  by 
bureaucratic  supervision,  law  has  been  found  impotent  to  pre 
vent  the  destruction,  or  wasteful  economy,  of  private  forests ; 
and  in  many  of  the  mountainous  departments  of  that  country, 
man  is  at  this  moment  so  fast  laying  waste  the  face  of  the 
earth,  that  the  most  serious  fears  are  entertained,  not  only  of 
the  depopulation  of  those  districts,  but  of  enormous  mischiefs 
to  the  provinces  contiguous  to  them.*  The  only  legal  pro 
visions  from  which  anything  is  to  be  hoped,  are  such  as  shall 
make  it  a  matter  of  private  advantage  to  the  landholder  to 
spare  the  trees  upon  his  grounds,  and  promote  the  growth  of 
the  young  wood.  Something  may  be  done  by  exempting 
standing  forests  from  taxation,  and  by  imposing  taxes  on  wood 
felled  for  fuel  or  for  timber,  something  by  premiums  or  hon 
orary  distinctions  for  judicious  management  of  the  wroods.  It 

*  "  The  laws  against  clearing  have  never  been  able  to  prevent  these  oper 
ations  when  the  proprietor  found  his  advantage  in  them,  and  the  long 
series  of  royal  ordinances  and  decrees  of  parliaments,  proclaimed  from 
the  days  of  Charlemagne  to  our  own,  with  a  view  of  securing  forest  prop 
erty,  have  served  only  to  show  the  impotence  of  legislative  action  on  this 
subject." — CLAVE,  Etudes  sur  V  Economic  Forestiere,  p.  33. 

"  A  proprietor  can  always  contrive  to  clear  his  woods,  whatever  may 
be  done  to  prevent  him  ;  it  is  a  mere  question  of  time,  and  a  few  impru 
dent  cuttings,  a  few  abuses  of  the  right  of  pasturage,  suffice  to  destroy  a 
forest  in  spite  of  all  regulations  to  the  contrary." — DUXOYER,  De  la  Liberte 
du  Travail,  ii,  p.  452,  as  quoted  by  Clave,  p.  353. 

Both  authors  agree  that  the  preservation  of  the  forests  in  France  is 
practicable  only  by  their  transfer  to  the  state,  which  alone  can  protect 
them  and  secure  their  proper  treatment.  It  is  much  to  be  feared  that 
even  this  measure  would  be  inadequate  to  save  the  forests  of  the  American 
Union.  There  is  little  respect  for  public  property  in  America,  and  the 
Federal  Government,  certainly,  would  not  be  the  proper  agent  of  the 
nation  for  this  purpose.  It  proved  itself  unable  to  protect  the  live-oak 
woods  of  Florida,  which  were  intended  to  be  preserved  for  the  use  of  the 
navy,  and  it  more  than  once  paid  contractors  a  high  price  for  timber  stolen 
from  its  own  forests.  The  authorities  of  the  individual  States  might  be 
more  efficient. 


234:  PUBLIC   FORESTS — AMERICAN    FORESTS. 

would  be  difficult  to  induce  governments,  general  or  local,  to 
make  the  necessary  appropriations  for  such  purposes,  but  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  it  would  be  sound  economy  in  the  end. 

In  countries  where  there  exist  municipalities  endowed  with 
an  intelligent  public  spirit,  the  purchase  and  control  of  forests 
by  such  corporations  would  often  prove  advantageous  ;  and  in 
some  of  the  provinces  of  Northern  Lombardy,  experience  has 
shown  that  such  operations  may  be  conducted  with  great  ben 
efit  to  all  the  interests  connected  with  the  proper  management 
of  the  woods.  In  Switzerland,  on  the  other  hand,  except  in 
some  few  cases  where  woods  have  been  preserved  as  a  defence 
against  avalanches,  the  forests  of  the  communes  have  been 
productive  of  little  advantage  to  the  public  interests,  and  have 
very  generally  gone  to  decay.  The  rights  of  pasturage,  every 
where  destructive  to  trees,  combined  with  toleration  of  tres 
passes,  have  so  reduced  their  value,  that  there  is,  too  often, 
nothing  left  that  is  worth  protecting.  In  the  canton  of  Ticino, 
the  peasants  have  very  frequently  voted  to  sell  the  town  woods 
and  divide  the  proceeds  among  the  corporators.  The  some 
times  considerable  sums  thus  received  are  squandered  in  wild 
revelry,  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  forests  brings  not  even  a  mo 
mentary  benefit  to  the  proprietors.* 

It  is  evidently  a  matter  of  the  utmost  importance  that  the 
public,  and  especially  land  owners,  be  roused  to  a  sense  of  the 
dangers  to  which  the  indiscriminate  clearing  of  the  woods  may 
expose  not  only  future  generations,  but  the  very  soil  itself. 
Fortunately,  some  of  the  American  States,  as  well  as  the  gov 
ernments  of  many  European  colonies,  still  retain  the  ownership 
of  great  tracts  of  primitive  woodland.  The  State  of  "New 
York,  for  example,  has,  in  its  northeastern  counties,  a  vast 
extent  of  territory  in  which  the  lumberman  has  only  here  and 
there  established  his  camp,  and  where  the  forest,  though  inter 
spersed  with  permanent  settlements,  robbed  of  some  of  its 
finest  pine  groves,  and  often  ravaged  by  devastating  fires,  still 

*  See  the  lively  account  of  the  sale  of  a  communal  wood  in  BEELEPSCH, 
Die  Alpen,  Holzschlager  und  Flosser. 


THE  ADIRONDACK  FOREST.  235 

covers  far  the  largest  proportion  of  the  surface.  Through  this 
territory,  the  soil  is  generally  poor,  and  even  the  new  clearings 
have  little  of  the  luxuriance  of  harvest  which  distinguishes 
them  elsewhere.  The  value  of  the  land  for  agricultural  uses 
is  therefore  very  small,  and  few  purchases  are  made  for  any 
other  purpose  than  to  strip  the  soil  of  its  timber.  It  has  been 
often  proposed  that  the  State  should  declare  the  remaining 
forest  the  inalienable  property  of  the  commonwealth,  but  I 
believe  the  motive  of  the  suggestion  has  originated  rather  in 
poetical  than  in  economical  views  of  the  subject.  Both  these 
classes  of  considerations  have  a  real  worth.  It  is  desirable  that 
some  large  and  easily  accessible  region  of  American  soil  should 
remain,  as  far  as  possible,  in  its  primitive  condition,  at  once  a 
museum  for  the  instruction  of  the  student,  a  garden  for  the 
recreation  of  the  lover  of  nature,  and  an  asylum  where  indi 
genous  tree,  and  humble  plant  that  loves  the  shade,  and  fish 
and  fowl  and  four-footed  beast,  may  dwell  and  perpetuate  their 
kind,  in  the  enjoyment  of  such  imperfect  protection  as  the 
laws  of  a  people  jealous  of  restraint  can  afford  them.  The 
immediate  loss  to  the  public  treasury  from  the  adoption  of  this 
policy  would  be  inconsiderable,  for  these  lands  are  sold  at  low 
rates.  The  forest  alone,  economically  managed,  would,  with 
out  injury,  and  even  with  benefit  to  its  permanence  and  growth, 
soon  yield  a  regular  income  larger  than  the  present  value  of 
the  fee. 

The  collateral  advantages  of  the  preservation  of  these  for 
ests  would  be  far  greater.  Nature  threw  up  those  mountains 
and  clothed  them  with  lofty  woods,  that  they  might  serve  as  a 
reservoir  to  supply  with  perennial  waters  the  thousand  rivers 
and  rills  that  are  fed  by  the  rains  and  snows  of  the  Adiron- 
dacks,  and  as  a  screen  for  the  fertile  plains  of  the  central  coun 
ties  against  the  chilling  blasts  of  the  north  wind,  which  meet 
no  other  barrier  in  their  sweep  from  the  Arctic  pole.  The 
climate  of  Northern  New  York  even  now  presents  greater 
extremes  of  temperature  than  that  of  Southern  France.  The 
long  continued  cold  of  winter  is  far  more  intense,  the  short 
heats  of  summer  not  less  fierce  than  in  Provence,  and  hence 


236  DESTRUCTIVE   ACTION   OF   TOKRENTS. 

the  preservation  of  every  influence  that  tends  to  maintain  an 
equilibrium  of  temperature  and  humidity  is  of  cardinal  im 
portance.  The  felling  of  the  Adirondack  woods  would  ulti 
mately  involve  for  Northern  and  Central  New  York  conse 
quences  similar  to  those  wfiich  have  resulted  from  the  lay 
ing  bare  of  the  southern  and  western  declivities  of  the  French 
Alps  and  the  spurs,  ridges,  and  detached  peaks  in  front  of 
them. 

It  is  true  that  the  evils  to  be  apprehended  from  the  clearing 
of  the  mountains  of  New  York  may  be  less  in  degree  than 
those  which  a  similar  cause  has  produced  in  Southern  France, 
where  the  intensity  of  its  action  has  been  increased  by  the 
inclination  of  the  mountain  declivities,  and  by  the  peculiar 
geological  constitution  of  the  earth.  The  degradation  of  the 
soil  is,  perhaps,  not  equally  promoted  by  a  combination  of  the 
same  circumstances,  in  any  of  the  American  Atlantic  States, 
but  still  they  have  rapid  slopes  and  loose  and  friable  soils 
enough  to  render  widespread  desolation  certain,  if  the  further 
destruction  of  the  woods  is  not  soon  arrested.  The  effects  of 
clearing  are  already  perceptible  in  the  comparatively  unvio- 
lated  region  of  which  I  am  speaking.  The  rivers  which  rise 
in  it  flow  with  diminished  currents  in  dry  seasons,  and  with 
augmented  volumes  of  water  after  heavy  rains.  They  bring 
down  much  larger  quantities  of  sediment,  and  the  increasing 
obstructions  to  the  navigation  of  the  Hudson,  which  are  ex 
tending  themselves  down  the  channel  in  proportion  as  the 
fields  are  encroaching  upon  the  forest,  give  good  grounds  for 
the  fear  of  serious  injury  to  the  commerce  of  the  important 
towns  on  the  upper  waters  of  that  river,  unless  measures  are 
taken  to  prevent  the  expansion  of  "improvements"  which 
have  already  been  carried  beyond  the  demands  of  a  wise 
economy. 

I  have  stated,  in  a  general  way,  the  nature  of  the  evils  in 
question,  and  of  the  processes  by  wrhich  they  are  produced ; 
but  I  shall  make  their  precise  character  and  magnitude  better 
understood  by  presenting  some  descriptive  and  statistical  de 
tails  of  facts  of  actual  occurrence.  I  select  for  this  purpose  the 


TORRENTS    IN   FEANCE.  237 

southeastern  portion  of  France,  not  because  that  territory  hag 
suffered  more  severely  than  some  others,  but  because  its  de 
terioration  is  comparatively  recent,  and  has  been  watched  and 
described  by  very  competent  and  trustworthy  observers,  whose 
reports  are  more  easily  accessible  than  those  published  in  other 
countries.* 

The  provinces  of  Dauphiny,  Avignon,  and  Provence  com 
prise  a  territory  of  fourteen  or  fifteen  thousand  square  miles, 
bounded  northwest  by  the  Isere,  northeast  and  east  by  the 
Alps,  south  by  the  Mediterranean,  west  by  the  Rhone,  and 
extending  from  4-2°  to  about  45°  of  north  latitude.  The  sur 
face  is  generally  hilly  and  even  mountainous,  and  several  of 
the  peaks  in  Dauphiny  rise  above  the  limit  of  perpetual  snow. 
The  climate,  as  compared  with  that  of  the  United  States  in  the 
same  latitude,  is  extremely  mild.  Little  snow  falls,  except 
upon  the  higher  mountain  ranges,  the  frosts  are  light,  and  the 
summers  long,  as  might,  indeed,  be  inferred  from  the  vegeta 
tion  ;  for  in  the  cultivated  districts,  the  vine  and  the  fig  every 
where  flourish,  the  olive  thrives  as  far  north  as  43|°,  and  upon 
the  coast,  grow  the  orange,  the  lemon,  and  the  date  palm.  The 
forest  trees,  too,  are  of  southern  type,  umbrella  pines,  various 
species  of  evergreen  oaks,  and  many  other  trees  and  shrubs  of 
persistent  broad-leaved  foliage,  characterizing  the  landscape. 

The  rapid  slope  of  the  mountains  naturally  exposed  these 
provinces  to  damage  by  torrents,  and  the  Romans  diminished 
their  injurious  effects  by  erecting,  in  the  beds  of  ravines,  bar 
riers  of  rocks  loosely  piled  up,  which  permitted  a  slow  escape 
of  the  water,  but  compelled  it  to  deposit  above  the  dikes  the 

*  Streffieur  (Ueber  die  Natur  und  die  Wirkungen  der  Wildbaclie,  p.  3) 
maintains  that  all  the  observations  and  speculations  of  French  authors 
on  the  nature  of  torrents  had  been  anticipated  by  Austrian  writers.  In 
proof  of  this  assertion  he  refers  to  the  works  of  Franz  von  Zallinger,  1778, 
Von  Arretin,  1808,  Franz  Duile,  1826,  all  published  at  Innsbruck,  and 
HAGEN'S  Beschreibung  neuerer  Wasttrbauvwrfaj  Konigsberg,  1826,  none  of 
which  works  are  known  to  ine.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  the  conclu 
sions  of  Surell  and  other  French  writers  whom  I  cite,  are  original  results 
of  personal  investigation,  and  not  borrowed  opinions. 


238  TOERENTS    IN    FRANCE. 

earth  and  gravel  with  which  it  was  charged.*  At  a  later 
I  period  the  Crusaders  "brought  home  from  Palestine,  with  much 
other  knowledge  gathered  from  the  wiser  Moslems,  the  art  of 
securing  the  hillsides  and  making  them  productive  by  ter 
racing  and  irrigation.  The  forests  which  covered  the  moun 
tains  secured  an  abundant  flow  of  springs,  and  the  process  of 
clearing  the  soil  went  on  so  slowly  that,  for  centuries,  neither 
the  want  of  timber  and  fuel,  nor  the  other  evils  about  to  be 
depicted,  wrere  seriously  felt.  Indeed,  throughout  the  Middle 
Ages,  these  provinces  were  well  wooded,  and  famous  for  the 
fertility  and  abundance,  not  only  of  the  low  grounds,  but  of 
the  hills. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  The  statistics  of  the  seventeenth  show  that  while 
there  had  been  an  increase  of  prosperity  and  population  in 
Lower  Provence,  as  well  as  in  the  correspondingly  situated 
parts  of  the  other  two  provinces  I  have  mentioned,  there  was 
an  alarming  decrease  both  in  the  wealth  and  in  the  population 
of  Upper  Provence  and  Dauphiny,  although,  by  the  clearing 
of  the  forests,  a  great  extent  of  plough  land  and  pasturage  had 
been  added  to  the  soil  before  reduced  to  cultivation.  It  was 
found,  in  fact,  that  the  augmented  violence  of  the  torrents  had 
swept  away,  or  buried  in  sand  and  gravel,  more  land  than  had 
been  reclaimed  by  clearing  ;  and  the  taxes  computed  by  fires 
or  habitations  underwent  several  successive  reductions  in  con- 

*  "Whether  Palissy  was  acquainted  with  this  ancient  practice,  or 
whether  it  was  one  of  those  original  suggestions  of  which  his  works  are 
BO  full,  I  know  not ;  but  in  his  treatise,  DCS  Eaux  et  Fontaines,  he  thus 
recommends  it,  by  way  of  reply  to  tho  objections  of  "Theorique,"  who 
had  expressed  the  fear  that  "the  waters  which  rush  violently  down  from 
the  heights  of  the  mountain  would  bring  with  them  much  earth,  sand,  and 
other  things,"  and  thus  spoil  the  artificial  fountain  that  "Practique"  was 
teaching  him  to  make:  "And  for  hindrance  of  the  mischiefs  of  great 
waters  which  may  be  gathered  in  few  hours  by  great  storms,  when  thou 
shalt  have  made  ready  thy  parterre  to  receive  the  water,  thou  must  lay 
great  stones  athwart  the  deep  channels  which  lead  to  thy  parterre.  And 
so  the  force  of  the  rushing  currents  shall  be  deadened,  and  thy  water  shall 
flow  peacefully  into  his  cisterns." — (Euvres  Completes,  p.  173. 


TOIiliENTS   IN   FEANCE.  239 

sequence  of  the  gradual  abandonment  of  the  wasted  soil  by  its 
starving  occupants.  The  growth  of  the  large  towns  on  and 
near  the  Rhone  and  the  coast,  their  advance  in  commerce  and 
industry,  and  the  consequently  enlarged  demand  for  agricul 
tural  products,  ought  naturally  to  have  increased  the  rural 
population  and  the  value  of  their  lands ;  but  the  physical 
decay  of  the  uplands  was  such  that  considerable  tracts  were 
deserted  altogether,  and  in  Upper  Provence,  the  fires  which  in 
1471  counted  897,  were  reduced  to  747  in  1699,  to  728  in 
1733,  and  to  635  in  1776. 

These  facts  I  take  from  the  La  Provence  au  point  de  vue 
des  Bois,  des  Torrents  et  des  Inondations,  of  Charles  de  Bibbe, 
one  of  the  highest  authorities,  and  I  add  further  details  from 
the  same  source. 

"  Commune  of"  Barles,  1707 :  Two  hills  have  become  con 
nected  by  land  slides,  and  have  formed  a  lake  which  covers 
the  best  part  of  the  soil.  1746  :  New  slides  buried  twenty 
houses  composing  a  village,  no  trace  of  which  is  left ;  more 
than  one  third  of  the  land  had  disappeared. 

"  Monans,  1724 :  Deserted  by  its  inhabitants  and  no  longer 
cultivated. 

"  Gueyclan,  1760  :  It  appears  by  records  that  the  best 
grounds  have  been  swept  off  since  1756,  and  that  ravines 
occupy  their  place. 

"  Digne,  1762  :  The  river  Bleone  has  destroyed  the  most 
valuable  part  of  the  territory. 

"  Malmaison,  1768  :  The  inhabitants  have  emigrated,  all 
their  fields  having  been  lost." 

In  the  case  of  the  commune  of  St.  Laurent  du  Yar,  it 
appears  that,  after  clearings  in  the  Alps,  succeeded  by  others 
in  the  common  woods  of  the  town,  the  floods  of  the  torrent 
Yar  became  more  formidable,  and  had  already  carried  off 
much  land  as  early  as  1708.  "  The  clearing  continued,  and 
more  soil  was  swept  away  in  1761.  In  1762,  after  another 
destructive  inundation,  many  of  the  inhabitants  emigrated, 
and  in  1765,  one  half  of  the  territory  had  been  laid  waste. 

"  In  1766,  the  assessor  Serraire  said  to  the  Assembly  :  c  As 


240  TOKKENTS    IN    FRANCE. 

to  the  damage  caused  by  brooks  and  torrents,  it  is  impossible 
to  deny  its  extent  Upper  Provence  is  in  danger  of  total  de 
struction,  and  the  waters  which  lay  it  waste  threaten  also  the 
ruin  of  the  most  valuable  grounds  on  the  plain  below.  Til 
lages  have  been  almost  submerged  by  torrents  wrhich  formerly 
had  not  even  names,  and  large  towns  are  on  the  point  of 
destruction  from  tl  j  same  cause.' ' 

In  1776,  Viscount  Puget  thus  reported  :  "  The  mere  aspect 
of  Upper  Provence  is  calculated  to  appal  the  patriotic  magis 
trate.  One  sees  only  lofty  mountains,  deep  valleys  with  pre 
cipitous  sides,  rivers  with  broad  beds  and  little  water,  impet 
uous  torrents,  which  in  floods  lay  waste  the  cultivated  land 
upon  their  banks  and  roll  huge  rocks  along  their  channels ; 
steep  and  parched  hillsides,  the  melancholy  consequences  of 
indiscriminate  clearing  ;  villages  whose  inhabitants,  finding  no 
longer  the  means  of  subsistence,  are  emigrating  day  by  day ; 
houses  dilapidated  to  huts,  and  but  a  miserable  remnant  of 
population." 

"  In  a  document  of  the  year  1771,  the  ravages  of  the  tor 
rents  were  compared  to  the  effects  of  an  earthquake,  half  the 
soil  in  many  communes  seeming  to  have  been  swallowed  up. 

"  Our  mountains,"  said  the  administrators  of  the  province 
of  the  Lower  Alps  in  1792,  "  present  nothing  but  a  surface  of 
stony  tufa  ;  clearing  is  still  going  on,  and  the  little  rivulets  are 
becoming  torrents.  Many  communes  have  lost  their  harvests, 
their  flocks,  and  their  houses  by  floods.  The  washing  down 
of  the  mountains  is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  clearings  and  the 
practice  of  burning  them  over." 

These  complaints,  it  willt,be  seen,  all  date  before  the  Revo 
lution,  but  the  desolation  they  describe  has  since  advanced 
with  still  swifter  steps. 

Surell — whose  valuable  work,  Etude  sur  les  Torrents 
des  Ilciutes  Alpes,  published  in  1811,  presents  the  most  appall 
ing  picture  of  the  desolations  of  the  torrent,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  the  most  careful  studies  of  the  history  and  essential  char 
acter  of  this  great  evil — in  speaking  of  the  valley  of  Devoluy, 
on  page  152,  says  *  "  Everything  concurs  to  show  that  it  was 


TOKRENTS    IN   FRANCE.  241 

anciently  wooded.  In  its  peat  bogs  are  found  buried  trunks 
of  trees,  monuments  of  its  former  vegetation.  In  the  frame 
work  of  old  houses,  one  sees  enormous  timber,  which  is  no 
longer  to  be  found  in  the  district.  Many  localities,  now  com 
pletely  bare,  still  retain  the  name  of  '  wood,'  and  one  of  them 
is  called,  in  old  deeds,  Comba  nigra  [Black  forest  or  dell],  on 
account  of  its  dense  woods.  These  and  many  other  proofs 
confirm  the  local  traditions  which  are  unanimous  on  this 
point. 

"  There,  as  everywhere  in  the  Upper  Alps,  the  clearings 
began  on  the  flanks  of  the  mountains,  and  were  gradually 
extended  into  the  valleys  and  then  to  the  highest  accessible 
peaks.  Then  followed  the  Revolution,  and  caused  the  destruc 
tion  of  the  remainder  of  the  trees  which  had  thus  far  escaped 
the  woodman's  axe." 

In  a  note  to  this  passage,  the  writer  says :  "  Several  per 
sons  have  told  me  that  they  had  lost  flocks  of  sheep,  by  stray 
ing,  in  the  forests  of  Mont  Auroux,  which  covered  the  flanks 
of  the  mountain  from  La  Cluse  to  Agneres.  These  declivities 
are  now  as  bare  as  the  palm  of  the  hand." 

The  ground  upon  the  steep  mountains  being  once  bared  of 
trees,  and  the  underwood  killed  by  the  grazing  of  horned  cat 
tle,  sheep,  and  goats,  every  depression  becomes  a  watercourse. 
"  Every  storm,"  says  Surell,  page  153,  "  gives  rise  to  a  new 
torrent.  Examples  of  such  are  shown,  which,  though  not  yet 
three  years  old,  have  laid  waste  the  finest  fields  of  their  val 
leys,  and  whole  villages  have  narrowly  escaped  being  swept 
into  ravines  formed  in  the  course  of  a  few  hours.  Sometimes 
the  flood  pours  in  a  sheet  over  the  surface,  without  ravine  or 
even  bed,  and  ruins  extensive  grounds,  which  are  abandoned 
forever." 

I  cannot  follow  Surell  in  his  description  and  classification 
of  torrents,  and  I  must  refer  the  reader  to  his  instructive  work 
for  a  full  exposition  of  the  theory  of  the  subject.  In  order, 
however,  to  show  what  a  concentration  of  destructive  energies 
may  be  effected  by  felling  the  woods  that  clothe  and  support 
the  sides  of  mountain  abysses,  I  cite  his  description  of  a  valley 
16 


••_.."-_  .  I  '  -        -  -.        -         . 

~i&sn.  IE  ^•F*y*"Tr-4TiT-.'r  :nn£  ^.  JL  irnrpi-  Viu'n  Tsr^s  i& 

-  1  •  "  ~"  "     r  '  —  '  1    ll^r*  "  -  *  i_~£r-  3  .  JT  ~TI^-  'vy.r.r'T 

"  iSl»S2I     if    IJAr    TDLoIiSr'.m? 

JT__L     L      l_r~-LZj.l'.r     lif 
-  __  "f-:        ' 
-  __  1    .  —  —  -    •T:ILr^    i:TT*-    r!~     liir   Iir^Clir  IT*  T 


sr  jimt  LJIL. 

ETtf  3  itirri'gT       iitHIi^ir  in.  "Llii     i 


~~~~  _^-     "r    i_ii     _:  _  "LUi    "IfTi^liliiJSi    1C 

if  ff^rn"n?>r  KHL  ^ie  rL-Ti^rgs  if  -IET 

if  "firs- 

»ac.!iaL.  ir 

"rrtrr»gaSTTir   USJT^S-  S^  c^Ty  it^^lC  KVTT  i«r 

i?giif  IE 

LI  n          .  :    :  - 

:c 


;  .       -        -  -  .  - 

t  fiiit  2camyuL  iL  "ini  ^iuiiT'  sc  ~n* 

-   - 

•     "    ..-Lii".--r  -::.r5i-   ;r^bi  -rini  fsin 
-         .     .         -  -  - 
-  • 

SL  is*.  BUL  I  jas»i  21.7^:  i«eL  i  ji«if  nf  ic*aiil  j 
\t  vin*fL  I  -riff   i!5»**3iT  i^n*: 


ar  ,-_.-«..  .  : 

.  :  :*.,  .%-:  J,':-   -:i 

--    -f 


Jruuii 


ix 

7  trey    HTTtrmr  TTH   HHKT    _  —  "    v^-T-     II 

THIIlSir^£  ^"2L  ILiAVlL  TI  5T  _1H&    L   TUr*tf»f     S 

t-*1  f«  ;  1  1  1  !  T  i  Hyrifrfrm-FrnT  af  ~i>^  _t  -^F^H"!  .SAS^TIIIIIIIIL.     ^"^1111"  "^"nniic. 

~—  "T'r  ±L  iTSf;,  SE^^  :  •**  A'Tinnr  ±>arKiiirni5tK:  snn  in:  "fr*^  liim^ 

TJiiTS  IE  "Ilif  TTtiii!Tt:KTn^.  ~I^F    rnT  •pjtnfcT'"  .   L 


so     fin      n  SHHL  i     nnaif  ~v^^  JD^  "nnr  u 


uSsr  IT  Titt-  TCT^miss  nf  _  •;."":  .  ..:  ~    _      * 

iiiinu*L  it  "rkm^f.,  viiL  "OM-  *^T  a:  HT  uttenov 
mrn^  ir  ~u±f  Tgfn^r  sias^  :  ... 

HkmcmL  iitf  J'tnranse  SB&  m 


a:  "tt  p-tmrsi:  a:  ^tf     a?  -IPS-  z 

:  "  s.     I 


in  ITimnir?  TTTTI^  iiw    ::n_:~r.    ::    ".   ^fv.  CUL 

it  E  ^ 


ic 


y  33        Hirnirmi     -*•  »  TH»T 


- 


«nc  Ti?»^nu^»  itsr  E  sajcir  rmai  V  iat  IE  ^r 


lir-  fc?  fe^B^.    lit  1JW&.  ^»riescf:  ik  TlSar^sait  ic  fc 
rsm;  '^aTfejr  laoim  lac  !*eet  wrwBisst:  IK  itsr  ^rOfe 

• 
-T  ,  T.  H  -» 


244  TOEEENTS   IN   FEANCE. 

there  will  rise,  I  am  sure,  more  than  one  voice  from  the  spots 
themselves,  to  attest  the  rigorous  exactness  of  this  picture  of 
their  wretchedness.  I  have  never  seen  its  equal  even  in  the 
Kabyle  villages  of  the  province  of  Constantino  ;  for  there  you 
can  travel  on  horseback,  and  you  find  grass  in  the  spring, 
whereas  in  more  than  fifty  communes  in  the  Alps  there  is 
absolutely  nothing. 

"  The  clear,  brilliant,  Alpine  sky  of  Embrun,  of  Gap,  of 
Barcelonette,  and  of  Digne,  which  for  months  is  without  a 
cloud,  produces  droughts  interrupted  only  by  diluvial  rains 
like  those  of  the  tropics.  The  abuse  of  the  right  of  pasturage 
and  the  felling  of  the  woods  have  stripped  the  soil  of  all  its 
grass  and  all  its  trees,  and  the  scorching  sun  bakes  it  to  the 
consistence  of  porphyry.  "When  moistened  by  the  rain,  as  it 
has  neither  support  nor  cohesion,  it  rolls  down  to  the  valleys, 
sometimes  in  floods  resembling  black,  yellow,  or  reddish  lava, 
sometimes  in  streams  of  pebbles,  and  even  huge  blocks  of 
stone,  which  pour  down  with  a  frightful  roar,  and  in  their 
swift  course  exhibit  the  most  convulsive  movements.  If  you 
overlook  from  an  eminence  one  of  these  landscapes  furrowed 
with  so  many  ravines,  it  presents  only  images  of  desolation 
and  of  death.  Yast  deposits  of  flinty  pebbles,  many  feet  in 
thickness,  which  have  rolled  down  and  spread  far  over  the 
plain,  surround  large  trees,  bury  even  their  tops,  and  rise 
above  them,  leaving  to  the  husbandman  no  longer  a  ray  of 
hope.  One  can  imagine  no  sadder  spectacle  than  the  deep 
fissures  in  the  flanks  of  the  mountains,  which  seem  to  have 
burst  forth  in  eruption  to  cover  the  plains  with  their  ruins. 
These  gorges,  under  the  influence  of  the  sun  which  cracks  and 
shivers  to  fragments  the  very  rocks,  and  of  the  rain  which 
sweeps  them  down,  penetrate  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  heart 
of  the  mountain,  while  the  beds  of  the  torrents  issuing  from 
them  are  sometimes  raised  several  feet,  in  a  single  year,  by 
the  debris,  so  that  they  reach  the  level  of  the  bridges,  which, 
of  course,  are  then  carried  off*.  The  torrent  beds  are  recog 
nized  at  a  great  distance,  as  they  issue  from  the  mountains, 
and  they  spread  themselves  over  the  low  grounds,  in  fan- 


TORRENTS    IN   FRANCE.  245 

shaped  expansions,  like  a  mantle  of  stone,  sometimes  ten  thou 
sand  feet  wide,  rising  high  at  the  centre,  and  curving  toward 
the  circumference  till  their  lower  edges  meet  the  plain. 

"  Such  is  their  aspect  in  dry  weather.  But  no  tongue  can 
give  an  adequate  description  of  their  devastations  in  one  of 
those  sudden  floods  which  resemble,  in  almost  none  of  their 
phenomena,  the  action  of  ordinary  river  water.  They  are  now 
no  longer  overflowing  brooks,  but  real  seas,  tumbling  down  in 
cataracts,  and  rolling  before  them  blocks  of  stone,  which  are 
hurled  forward  by  the  shock  of  the  waves  like  balls  shot  out  by 
the  explosion  of  gunpowder.  Sometimes  ridges  of  pebbles  are 
driven  down  when  the  transporting  torrent  does  not  rise  high 
enough  to  show  itself,  and  then  the  movement  is  accompanied 
with  a  roar  louder  than  the  crash  of  thunder.  A  furious  wind 
precedes  the  rushing  water  and  announces  its  approach.  Then 
comes  a  violent  eruption,  followed  by  a  flow  of  muddy  waves, 
and  after  a  few  hours  all  returns  to  the  dreary  silence  which 
at  periods  of  rest  marks  these  abodes  of  desolation. 

"  This  is  but  an  imperfect  sketch  of  this  scourge  of  the 
Alps.  Its  devastations  are  increasing  with  the  progress  of 
clearing,  and  are  every  day  turning  a  portion  of  our  frontier 
departments  into  barren  wastes. 

"  The  unfortunate  passion  for  clearing  manifested  itself  at 
the  beginning  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  has  much  in 
creased  under  the  pressure  of  immediate  want.  It  has  now 
reached  an  extreme  point,  and  must  be  speedily  checked,  or 
the  last  inhabitant  will  be  compelled  to  retreat  when  the  last 
tree  falls. 

"The  elements  of  destruction  are  increasing  in  violence. 
Rivers  might  be  mentioned  whose  beds  have  been  raised  ten 
feet  in  a  single  year.  The  devastation  advances  in  geomet 
rical  progression  as  the  higher  slopes  are  bared  of  their  wood, 
and  '  the  ruin  from  above,'  to  use  the  words  of  a  peasant, 
c  helps  to  hasten  the  desolation  below.' 

"  The  Alps  of  Provence  present  a  terrible  aspect.  In  the 
more  equable  climate  of  Northern  France,  one  can  form  no 
conception  of  those  parched  mountain  gorges  where  not  even 


24:6  TORRENTS   IN  FRANCE. 

a  bush  can  be  found  to  shelter  a  bird,  where,  at  most,  the 
wanderer  sees  in  summer  here  and  there  a  withered  lavender, 
where  all  the  springs  are  dried  up,  and  where  a  dead  silence, 
hardly  broken  bj  even  the  hum  of  an  insect,  prevails.  But  if 
a  storm  bursts  forth,  masses  of  water  suddenly  shoot  from  the 
mountain  heights  into  the  shattered  gulfs,  waste  without  irri 
gating,  deluge  without  refreshing  the  soil  they  overflow  in 
their  swift  descent,  and  leave  it  even  more  seared  than  it  was 
from  want  of  moisture.  Man  at  last  retires  from  the  fearful 
desert,  and  I  have,  the  present  season,  found  not  a  living  soul 
in  districts  where  I  remember  to  have  enjoyed  hospitality 
thirty  years  ago." 

In  1853,  ten  years  after  the  date  of  Blanqui's  memoir,  M. 
de  Bonville,  prefect  of  the  Lower  Alps,  addressed  to  the  Gov 
ernment  a  report  in  which  the  following  passages  occur  : 

"  It  is  certain  that  the  productive  mould  of  the  Alps,  swept 
off  by  the  increasing  violence  of  that  curse  of  the  mountains, 
the  torrents,  is  daily  diminishing  with  fearful  rapidity.  All 
our  Alps  are  wholly,  or  in  large  proportion,  bared  of  wood. 
Their  soil,  scorched  by  the  sun  of  Provence,  cut  up  by  the 
hoofs  of  the  sheep,  which,  not  finding  on  the  surface  the  grass 
they  require  for  their  sustenance,  scratch  the  ground  in  search 
of  roots  to  satisfy  their  hunger,  is  periodically  washed  and  car 
ried  off  by  melting  snows  and  summer  storms. 

"  I  will  not  dwell  on  the  effects  of  the  torrents.  For  sixty 
years  they  have  been  too  often  depicted  to  require  to  be 
further  discussed,  but  it  is  important  to  show  that  their  rav 
ages  are  daily  extending  the  range  of  devastation.  The  bed 
of  the  Durance,  which  now  in  some  places  exceeds  2,000 
metres  [about  6,600  feet,  or  a  mile  and  a  quarter]  in  width, 
and,  at  ordinary  times,  has  a  current  of  water  less  than  10 
metres  [about  33  feet]  wide,  shows  something  of  the  extent  of 
the  damage.*  "Where,  ten  years  ago,  there  were  still  woods 

*  In  the  days  of  the  Eoman  empire  the  Durance  was  a  navigable  river, 
with  a  commerce  so  important  that  the  boatmen  upon  it  formed  a  distinct 
corporation. — LADOUCETTE,  Histoire,  etc.,  des  Hautes  Alpes,  p.  354. 

Even  as  early  as  1789,  the  Durance  was  computed  to  have  already 


TOKKENTS    IN    FRANCE.  247 

and  cultivated  grounds  to  be  seen,  there  is  now  but  a  vast 
torrent :  there  is  not  one  of  our  mountains  which  has  not  at 
least  one  torrent,  and  new  ones  are  daily  forming. 

"  An  indirect  proof  of  the  diminution  of  the  soil  is  to  be 
found  in  the  depopulation  of  the  country.  In  1852,  I  re 
ported  to  the  General  Council  that,  according  to  the  census 
of  that  year,  the  population  of  the  department  of  the  Lower 
Alps  had  fallen  off  no  less  than  5,000  souls  in  the  five  years 
between  1846  and  1851. 

"  Unless  prompt  and  energetic  measures  are  taken,  it  is 
easy  to  fix  the  epoch  when  the  French  Alps  will  be  but  a 
desert.  The  interval  between  1851  and  1856  will  show  a 
further  decrease  of  population.  In  1862,  the  ministry  will 
announce  a  continued  and  progressive  reduction  in  the  num 
ber  of  acres  devoted  to  agriculture  ;  every  year  will  aggravate 
the  evil,  and,  in  a  half  century,  France  will  count  more  ruins, 
and  a  department  the  less." 

Time  has  verified  the  predictions  of  De  Bonville.  The  later 
census  returns  show  a  progressive  diminution  in  the  popula 
tion  of  the  departments  of  the  Lower  Alps,  the  Isere,  the 
Drome,  Ariege,  the  Upper  and  the  Lower  Pyrenees,  the 
Lozere,  the  Ardennes,  the  Doubs,  the  Yosges,  and,  in  short,  in 
all  the  provinces  formerly  remarkable  for  their  forests.  This 
diminution  is  not  to  be  ascribed  to  a  passion  for  foreign  emi 
gration,  as  in  Ireland,  and  in  parts  of  Germany  and  of  Italy ; 
it  is  simply  a  transfer  of  population  from  one  part  of  the 
empire  to  another,  from  soils  which  human  folly  has  rendered 
uninhabitable,  by  ruthlessly  depriving  them  of  their  natural 
advantages  and  securities,  to  provinces  where  the  face  of  the 
earth  was  so  formed  by  nature  as  to  need  no  such  safeguards, 
and  where,  consequently,  she  preserves  her  outlines  in  spite  of 
the  wasteful  improvidence  of  man.* 

covered  with  gravel  and  pebbles  not  less  than  130,000  acres,  "  which,  but 
for  its  inundations,  would  have  been  the  finest  land  in  the  province."- 
AETHUR  YOUNG,  Travels  in  France,  vol.  i,  ch.  i. 

*  Between  1851  and  1856  the  population  of  Languedoc  and  Provence 
had  increased  by  101,000  souls.  The  augmentation,  however,  was  wholly 


248  ACTION    OF   TOKRENTS. 

Highly  colored  as  these  pictures  seem,  they  are  not  exag 
gerated,  although  the  hasty  tourist  through  Southern  France 
and  Northern  Italy,  finding  little  in  his  high  road  experiences 
to  justify  them,  might  suppose  them  so.  The  lines  of  communi 
cation  by  locomotive  train  and  diligence  lead  generally  over 
safer  ground,  and  it  is  only  when  they  ascend  the  Alpine 
passes  and  traverse  the  mountain  chains,  that  scenes  somewhat 
resembling  those  just  described  fall  under  the  eye  of  the  ordi 
nary  traveller.  But  the  extension  of  the  sphere  of  devastation, 
by  the  degradation  of  the  mountains  and  the  transportation 
of  their  debris,  is  producing  analogous  effects  upon  the  lower 
ridges  of  the  Alps  and  the  plains  which  skirt  them ;  and  even 
now  one  needs  but  an  hour's  departure  from  some  great  thor 
oughfares  to  reach  sites  where  the  genius  of  destruction  revels 
as  wildly  as  in  the  most  frightful  of  the  abysses  which  Blanqui 
has  painted.* 

in  the  provinces  of  the  plains,  where  all  the  principal  cities  are  found.  In 
these  provinces  the  increase  was  204,000,  while  in  the  mountain  provinces 
there  was  a  diminution  of  103,000.  The  reduction  of  the  area  of  arable 
land  is  perhaps  even  more  striking.  In  1842,  the  department  of  the  Lower 
Alps  possessed  99,000  hectares,  or  nearly  245,000  acres,  of  cultivated  soil. 
In  1852,  it  had  but  74,000  hectares.  In  other  words,  in  ten  years  25,000 
hectares,  or  61,000  acres,  had  been  washed  away  or  rendered  worthless 
for  cultivation,  by  torrents  and  the  abuses  of  pasturage. — CLAVE,  Etudes, 
pp.  66,  6T. 

*  The  Skalara-Tobel,  for  instance,  near  Coire.  See  the  description  in 
BEP.LEPSCH,  Die  Alpcn^  pp.  169  et  seqq,  or  in  Stephen's  English  translation. 

The  recent  change  in  the  character  of  the  Mella — a  river  anciently  so 
remarkable  for  the  gentleness  of  its  current  that  it  was  specially  noticed 
by  Catullus  as  flowing  molli  flumine — deserves  more  than  a  passing 
remark.  This  river  rises  in  the  mountain  chain  east  of  Lake  Iseo,  and 
traversing  the  district  of  Brescia,  empties  into  the  Oglio  after  a  course  of 
about  seventy  miles.  The  iron  works  in  the  upper  valley  of  the  Mella  had 
long  created  a  considerable  demand  for  wood,  but  their  operations  were 
not  so  extensive  as  to  occasion  any  very  sudden  or  general  destruction  of 
the  forests,  and  the  only  evil  experienced  from  the  clearings  was  the  grad 
ual  diminution  of  the  volume  of  the  river.  Within  the  last  twenty  years, 
the  superior  quality  of  the  arms  manufactured  at  Brescia  has  greatly  en 
larged  the  sale  of  them,  and  very  naturally  stimulated  the  activity  of  both 
the  forges  and  of  the  colliers  who  supply  them,  and  the  hillsides  have  been 


EXCAVATION    BY   TORRENTS.  249 

There  is  one  effect  of  the  action  of  torrents  which  few  trav 
ellers  on  the  Continent  are  heedless  enough  to  pass  without 
notice.  I  refer  to  the  elevation  of  the  beds  of  mountain 
streams  in  consequence  of  the  deposit  of  the  debris  with  which 
they  are  charged.  To  prevent  the  spread  of  sand  and  gravel 
over  the  fields  and  the  deluging  overflow  of  the  raging  waters, 
the  streams  are  confined  by  walls  and  embankments,  which  are 
gradually  built  higher  and  higher  as  the  bed  of  the  torrent  is 
raised,  so  that,  to  reach  a  river,  you  ascend  from  the  fields 
beside  it ;  and  sometimes  the  ordinary  level  of  the  stream  is 
above  the  streets  and  even  the  roofs  of  the  towns  through 
which  it  passes.* 

rapidly  stripped  of  their  timber.  Up  to  1850,  no  destructive  inundation 
of  the  Mella  had  heen  recorded.  Buildings  in  great  numbers  had  been 
erected  upon  its  margin,  and  its  valley  was  conspicuous  for  its  rural 
beauty  and  its  fertility.  But  when  the  denudation  of  the  mountains  had 
reached  a  certain  point,  avenging  nature  began  the  work  of  retribution. 
In  the  spring  and  summer  of  1850  several  ne\v  torrents  were  suddenly 
formed  in  the  upper  tributary  valleys,  and  on  the  14th  and  15th  of  August 
in  that  year,  a  fall  of  rain,  not  heavier  than  had  been  often  experienced, 
produced  a  flood  which  not  only  inundated  much  ground  never  before 
overflowed,  but  destroyed  a  great  number  of  bridges,  dams,  factories,  and 
other  valuable  structures,  and,  what  was  a  far  more  serious  evil,  swept 
off  from  the  rocks  an  incredible  extent  of  soil,  and  converted  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  valleys  of  the  Italian  Alps  into  a  ravine  almost  as  bare  and 
as  barren  as  the  savagest  gorge  of  Southern  France.  The  pecuniary 
damage  was  estimated  at  many  millions  of  francs,  and  the  violence  of  the 
catastrophe  was  deemed  so  extraordinary,  even  in  a  country  subject  to 
similar  visitations,  that  the  sympathy  excited  for  the  sufferers  produced,  in 
five  months,  voluntary  contributions  for  their  relief  to  the  amount  of 
nearly  $200,000  —Dclle  Inondazioni  del  Nella,  etc.,  nella  notte  del  14  al  15 
Agosfo,  1850. 

The  author  of  this  remarkable  pamphlet  has  chosen  as  a  motto  a  pas 
sage  from  the  Vulgate  translation  of  Job,  which  is  interesting  as  showing 
accurate  observation  of  the  action  of  the  torrent :  "  Mons  cadens  definit, 
et  saxum  transfertur  de  loco  suo  ;  lapides  excavant  aquas  et  alluvione  paul- 
latim  terra  consumitur." — Job  xiv,  18,  19. 

The  English  version  is  much  less  striking,  and  gives  a  different  sense. 

*  Streffleur  quotes  from  Duile  the  following  observations  :  "  The  chan 
nel  of  the  Tyrolese  brooks  is  often  raised  much  above  the  valleys  through 


250  EXCAVATION  BY  TORRENTS. 

The  traveller  wlio  visits  the  depths  of  an  Alpine  ravine, 
observes  the  length  and  width  of  the  gorge  and  the  great 
height  and  apparent  solidity  of  the  precipitous  walls  which 
bound  it,  and  calculates  the  mass  of  rock  required  to  fill  the 
vacancy,  can  hardly  believe  that  the  humble  brooklet  which 
purls  at  his  feet  has  been  the  principal  agent  in  accomplishing 
this  tremendous  erosion.  Closer  observation  will  often  teach 
him,  that  the  seemingly  unbroken  rock  which  overhangs  the 
valley  is  full  of  cracks  and  fissures,  and  really  in  such  a  state 
of  disintegration  that  every  frost  must  bring  down  tons  of  it. 
If  he  compute  the  area  of  the  basin  which  finds  here  its  only 
discharge,  he  will  perceive  that  a  sudden  thaw  of  the  winter's 
deposit  of  snow,  or  one  of  those  terrible  discharges  of  rain  so 
common  in  the  Alps,  must  send  forth  a  deluge  mighty  enough 
to  sweep  down  the  largest  masses  of  gravel  and  of  rock.* 

which  they  flow.  The  bed  of  the  Fersina  is  elevated  high  above  the  city 
of  Trient,  which  lies  near  it.  The  Villerbach  flows  at  a  much  more 
elevated  level  than  that  of  the  market  place  of  Neumarkt  and  Vill,  and 
threatens  to  overwhelm  both  of  them  with  its  waters.  The  Taller  at 
Botzen  is  at  least  even  with  the  roofs  of  the  adjacent  town,  if  not  above 
them.  The  tower  steeples  of  the  villages  of  Schlanders,  Kortsch,  and 
Laas,  are  lower  than  the  surface  of  the  Gadribach.  The  Saldurbach  at 
Schluderns  menaces  the  far  lower  village  with  destruction,  and  the  chief 
town,  Schwaz,  is  in  similar  danger  from  the  Lahnbach." — STREFFLEUE, 
Ueber  die  Wildbaclic,  etc.,  p.  7. 

*  The  snow  drifts  into  the  ravines  and  accumulates  to  incredible  depths, 
and  the  water  resulting  from  its  dissolution  and  from  the  deluging  rains 
which  fall  in  spring,  and  sometimes  in  the  summer,  being  confined  by 
rocky  walls  on  both  sides,  rises  to  a  very  great  height,  and  of  course 
acquires  an  immense  velocity  and  transporting  power  in  its  rapid  descent 
to  its  outlet  from  the  mountain.  In  the  winter  of  1842-'3,  the  valley  of 
the  Doveria,  along  which  the  Simplon  road  passes,  was  filled  with  solid 
snowdrifts  to  the  depth  of  a  hundred  feet  above  the  carriage  road,  and  the 
sledge  track  by  which  passengers  and  the  mails  were  carried  ran  at  that 
height. 

Other  things  being  equal,  the  transporting  power  of  the  water  is  great 
est  where  its  flow  is  most  rapid.  This  is  usually  in  the  direction  of  the 
axis  of  the  ravine.  As  the  current  pours  out  of  the  gorge  and  escapes 
from  the  lateral  confinement  of  its  walls,  it  spreads  and  divides  itself  into 
numerous  smaller  streams,  which  shoot  out  from  the  mouth  of  the  valley, 


EXCAVATION  BY  TORRENTS.  251 

The  simple  measurement  of  the  cubical  contents  of  the  semi 
circular  hillock  which  he  climbed  before  he  entered  the  gorge, 
the  structure  and  composition  of  which  conclusively  show 
that  it  must  have  been  washed  out  of  this  latter  by  torrential 
action,  will  often  account  satisfactorily  for  the  disposal  of  most 
of  the  matter  which  once  filled  the  ravine. 

It  must  further  be  remembered,  that  every  inch  of  the 
violent  movement  of  the  rocks  is  accompanied  with  crushing 
concussion,  or,  at  least,  with  great  abrasion,  and,  as  you  follow 
the  deposit  along  the  course  of  the  waters  which  transport  it, 
you  find  the  stones  gradually  rounding  off  in  form,  and  dimin 
ishing  in  size  until  they  pass  successively  into  gravel,  sand, 
impalpable  slime. 

as  from  a  centre,  in  different  directions,  like  the  ribs  of  a  fan  from  the 
pivot,  each  carrying  with  it  its  quota  of  stones  and  gravel.  The  plain 
below  the  point  of  issue  from  the  mountain  is  rapidly  raised  by  newly 
formed  torrents,  the  elevation  depending  on  the  inclination  of  the  bed  and 
the  form  and  weight  of  the  matter  transported.  Every  flood  both  increases 
the  height  of  this  central  point  and  extends  the  entire  circumference  of 
the  deposit.  The  stream  retaining  most  nearly  the  original  direction  moves 
with  the  greatest  momentum,  and  consequently  transports  the  solid  matter 
with  which  it  is  charged  to  the  greatest  distance. 

The  untravelled  reader  will  comprehend  this  the  better  when  he  is  in 
formed  that  the  southern  slope  of  the  Alps  generally  rises  suddenly  out  of 
the  plain,  with  no  intervening  hill  to  break  the  abruptness  of  the  transition, 
except  those  consisting  of  comparatively  small  heaps  of  its  own  debris 
brought  down  by  ancient  glaciers  or  recent  torrents.  The  torrents  do  not 
wind  down  valleys  gradually  widening  to  the  rivers  or  the  sea,  but  leap  at 
once  from  the  flanks  of  the  mountains  upon  the  plains  below.  This  ar 
rangement  of  surfaces  naturally  facilitates  the  formation  of  vast  deposits  at 
their  points  of  emergence,  and  the  centre  of  the  accumulation  in  the  case 
of  very  small  torrents  is  not  unfrequently  a  hundred  feet  high,  and  some 
times  very  much  more. 

Torrents  and  the  rivers  that  receive  them  transport  mountain  debris  to 
almost  incredible  distances.  Lorentz,  in  an  official  report  on  this  subject, 
as  quoted  by  Marschand  from  the  Memoirs  of  the  Agricultural  Society  of 
Lyons,  says :  "  The  felling  of  the  woods  produces  torrents  which  cover 
the  cultivated  soil  with  pebbles  and  fragments  of  rock,  and  they  do  not 
confine  their  ravages  to  the  vicinity  of  the  mountains,  but  extend  them 
into  the  fertile  fields  of  Provence  and  other  departments,  to  the  distance 
of  forty  or  fifty  leagues." — Entwaldiuifj  der  Geljirgc,  p.  17. 


252  TRANSPORTING    POWER   OF   RIVERS. 

I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  all  the  rocky  valleys  of  the 
Alps  have  been  produced  by  the  action  of  torrents  resulting 
from  the  destruction  of  the  forests.  All  the  greater,  and  many 
of  the  smaller  channels,  by  which  that  chain  is  drained,  owe 
their  origin  to  higher  causes.  They  are  primitive  fissures, 
ascribable  to  disruption  in  upheaval  or  other  geological  con 
vulsion,  widened  and  scarped,  and  often  even  polished,  so  to 
speak,  by  the  action  of  glaciers  during  the  ice  period,  and  but 
little  changed  in  form  by  running  water  in  later  eras.* 

In  these  valleys  of  ancient  formation,  which  extend  into 
the  very  heart  of  the  mountains,  the  streams,  though  rapid, 
have  lost  the  true  torrential  character,  if,  indeed,  they  ever 
possessed  it.  Their  beds  have  become  approximately  constant, 
and  their  walls  no  longer  crumble  and  fall  into  the  waters  that 
wash  their  bases.  The  torrent- worn  ravines,  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  are  of  later  date,  and  belong  more  properly  to  what 
may  be  called  the  crust  of  the  Alps,  consisting  of  loose  rocks, 
of  gravel,  and  of  earth,  strewed  along  the  surface  of  the  great  de 
clivities  of  the  central  ridge,  and  accumulated  thickly  between 
their  solid  buttresses.  But  it  is  on  this  crust  that  the  moun 
taineer  dwells.  Here  are  his  forests,  here  his  pastures,  and  the 
ravages  of  the  torrent  both  destroy  his  world,  and  convert  it 
into  a  source  of  overwhelming  desolation  to  the  plains  below. 

^ 

Transporting  Power  of  Rivers. 

An  instance  that  fell  under  my  own  observation  in  1857, 
will  serve  to  show  something  of  the  eroding  and  transporting 

*  The  precipitous  walls  of  the  Val  de  Lys,  and  more  especially  of  the 
Val  Doveria,  though  here  and  there  shattered,  show  in  many  places  a 
smoothness  of  face  over  a  large  vertical  plane,  at  the  height  of  hundreds 
of  feet  above  the  bottom  of  the  valley,  which  no  known  agency  but  glacier 
ice  is  capable  of  producing,  and  of  course  they  can  have  undergone  no  sen 
sible  change  at  those  points  for  a  vast  length  of  time.  The  beds  of  the 
rivers  which  flow  through  those  valleys  suffer  lateral  displacement  occa 
sionally,  where  there  is  room  for  the  shifting  of  the  channel ;  but  if  any  ele 
vation  or  depression  takes  place  in  them,  it  is  too  slow  to  be  perceptible 
except  in  case  of  some  merely  temporary  obstruction. 


TRANSPORTING    TOWER   OF   RIVERS.  253 

power  of  streams  which,  in  these  respects,  fall  incalculably 
below  the  torrents  of  the  Alps.  In  a  flood  of  the  Ottaque- 
chee,  a  small  river  which  flows  through  Woodstock,  Vermont, 
a  milldam  on  that  stream  burst,  and  the  sediment  with  which 
the  pond  was  filled,  estimated  after  careful  measurement  at 
13,000  cubic  yards,  was  carried  down  by  the  current.  Between 
this  dam  and  the  slack  water  of  another,  four  miles  below,  the 
bed  of  the  stream,  which  is  composed  of  pebbles  interspersed 
in  a  few  places  with  larger  stones,  is  about  sixty-five  feet  wide, 
though,  at  low  water,  the  breadth  of  the  current  is  considerably 
less.  The  sand  and  fine  gravel  were  smoothly  and  evenly  dis 
tributed  over  the  bed  to  a  width  of  fifty-five  or  sixty  feet,  and 
for  a  distance  of  about  two  miles,  except  at  two  or  three  inter 
vening  rapids,  filled  up  all  the  interstices  between  the  stones, 
covering  them  to  the  depth  of  nine  or  ten  inches,  so  as  to  pre 
sent  a  regularly  formed  concave  channel,  lined  with  sand,  and 
reducing  the  depth  of  water,  in  some  places,  from  five  or  six 
feet  to  fifteen  or  eighteen  inches.  Observing  this  deposit  after 
the  river  had  subsided  and  become  so  clear  that  the  bottom 
could  be  seen,  I  supposed  that  the  next  flood  would  produce 
an  extraordinary  erosion  of  the  banks  and  some  permanent 
changes  in  the  channel  of  the  stream,  in  consequence  of  the 
elevation  of  the  bed  and  the  filling  up  of  the  spaces  between 
the  stones  through  which  formerly  much  water  had  flowed ; 
but  no  such  result  followed.  The  spring  freshet  of  the  next 
year  entirely  washed  out  the  sand  its  predecessor  had  depos 
ited,  carried  it  to  ponds  and  still- water  reaches  below,  and  left 
the  bed  of  the  river  almost  precisely  in  its  former  condition, 
though,  of  course,  with  the  slight  displacement  of  the  pebbles 
which  every  flood  produces  in  the  channels  of  such  streams. 
The  pond,  though  often  previously  discharged  by  the  breakage 
of  the  dam,  had  then  been  undisturbed  for  about  twenty-five 
years,  and  its  contents  consisted  almost  entirely  of  sand,  the 
rapidity  of  the  current  in  floods  being  such  that  it  would  let 
fall  little  lighter  sediment,  even  above  an  obstruction  like  a 
dam.  The  quantity  I  have  mentioned  evidently  bears  a  very 
inconsiderable  proportion  to  the  total  erosion  of  the  stream 


254-  THE   RIVER    TO. 

during  that  period,  because  the  wash  of  the  banks  consists 
chiefly  of  fine  earth  rather  than  of  sand,  and  after  the  pond 
was  once  filled,  or  nearly  so,  even  this  material  could  no  longer 
be  deposited  in  it.  The  fact  of  the  complete  removal  of  the 
deposit  I  have  described  between  the  two  dams  in  a  single 
freshet,  shows  that,  in  spite  of  considerable  obstruction  from 
roughness  of  bed,  large  quantities  of  sand  may  be  taken  up 
and  carried  off  by  streams  of  no  great  rapidity  of  inclination  ; 
for  the  whole  descent  of  the  bed  of  the  river  between  the  two 
dams — a  distance  of  four  miles — is  but  sixty  feet,  or  fifteen  feet 
to  the  mile. 

The  Po  and  its  Deposits. 

The  current  of  the  river  Po,  for  a  considerable  distance 
after  its  volume  of  water  is  otherwise  sufficient  for  continuous 
navigation,  is  too  rapid  for  that  purpose  until  near  Piacenza, 
where  its  velocity  becomes  too  much  reduced  to  transport 
great  quantities  of  mineral  matter,  except  in  a  state  of  minute 
division.  Its  southern  affluents  bring  down  from  the  Apen 
nines  a  large  quantity  of  fine  earth  from  various  geological 
formations,  while  its  Alpine  tributaries  west  of  the  Ticino  are 
charged  chiefly  with  rock  ground  down  to  sand  or  gravel.* 

*  Lombardini  found,  twenty  years  ago,  that  the  mineral  matter  brought 
down  to  the  Po  by  its  tributaries  was,  in  general,  comminuted  to  about  the 
same  degree  of  fineness  as  the  sands  of  its  bed  at  their  points  of  discharge. 
In  the  case  of  the  Trebbia,  which  rises  high  in  the  Apennines  and  empties 
into  the  Po  at  Piacenza,  it  was  otherwise,  that  river  rolling  pebbles  and 
coarse  gravel  into  the  channel  of  the  principal  stream.  The  banks  of  the 
other  affluents — excepting  some  of  those  which  discharge  their  waters  into 
the  great  lakes — then  either  retained  their  woods,  or  had  been  so  long 
clear  of  them,  that  the  torrents  had  removed  most  of  the  disintegrated 
and  loose  rock  in  their  upper  basins.  The  valley  of  the  Trebbia  had  been 
recently  cleared,  and  all  the  forces  which  tend  to  the  degradation  and 
transportation  of  rock  were  in  full  activity. — Notice  sur  les  Rivieres  de  la 
Lombardic,  Annales  des  Ponts  et  Chamsees,  1847,  ler  semestre,  p.  131. 

Since  the  date  of  Lombardini's  observations,  many  Alpine  valleys  have 
been  stripped  of  their  woods.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  whether 
any  sensible  change  has  been  produced  in  the  character  or  quantity  of  the 
matter  transported  by  them  to  the  Po. 


SEDIMENT   OF   THE   PO.  255 

The  bed  of  the  river  has  been  somewhat  elevated  by  the  de 
posits  in  its  channel,  though  not  by  any  means  above  the  level 
of  the  adjacent  plains  as  has  been  so  often  represented.  The 
dikes,  which  confine  the  current  at  high  water,  at  the  same 
time  augment  its  velocity  and  compel  it  to  carry  most  of  its 
sediment  to  the  Adriatic.  It  has,  therefore,  raised  neither  its 
own  channel  nor  its  alluvial  shores,  as  it  would  have  done  if  it 
had  remained  unconfiried.  But,  as  the  surface  of  the  water  in 
floods  is  from  six  to  fifteen  feet  above  the  general  level  of  its 
banks,  the  Po  can,  at  that  period,  receive  no  contributions  of 
earth  from  the  washing  of  the  fields  of  Lombardy,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  sediment  it  now  de 
posits  at  its  mouth  descended  from  the  Alps  in  the  form  of 
rock,  though  reduced  by  the  grinding  action  of  the  waters,  in 
its  passage  seaward,  to  the  condition  of  fine  sand,  and  often 
of  silt  * 

We  know  little  of  the  history  of  the  Po,  or  of  the  geog 
raphy  of  the  coast  near  the  point  where  it  enters  the  Adriatic, 
at  any  period  more  than  twenty  centuries  before  our  own. 
Still  less  can  we  say  how  much  of  the  plains  of  Lombardy  had 
been  formed  by  its  action,  combined  with  other  causes,  before 
man  accelerated  its  levelling  operations  by  felling  the  first 
woods  on  the  mountains  whence  its  waters  are  derived.  But 
we  know  that  since  the  Roman  conquest  of  Xorthern  Italy,  its 
deposits  have  amounted  to  a  quantity  which,  if  recemented 
into  rock,  recombined  into  gravel,  common  earth,  and  vege 
table  mould,  and  restored  to  the  situations  where  eruption  or 
upheaval  originally  placed,  or  vegetation  deposited  it,  would 
fill  up  hundreds  of  deep  ravines  in  the  Alps  and  Apennines, 
change  the  plan  and  profile  of  their  chains,  and  give  their 

*  In  proportion  as  the  dikes  are  improved,  and  breaches  and  the  escape 
of  the  water  through  them  are  less  frequent,  the  height  of  the  annual  inun 
dations  is  increased.  Many  towns  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  and  of  course 
within  the  system  of  parallel  embankments,  were  formerly  secure  from 
Hood  by  the  height  of  the  artificial  mounds  on  which  they  were  built ;  but 
they  have  recently  been  obliged  to  construct  ring  dikes  for  their  protec 
tion. — BAUMGAETEX,  after  LOMBARDINI,  in  the  paper  last  quoted,  pp.  141, 147. 


256  SEDIMENT   OF   THE   PO. 

southern  and  northern  faces  respectively  a  geographical  aspect 
very  different  from  that  they  now  present.  Ravenna,  forty 
miles  south  of  the  principal  mouth  of  the  Po,  was  built  like 
Venice,  in  a  lagoon,  and  the  Adriatic  still  washed  its  walls  at 
the  commencement  of  the  Christian  era.  The  mud  of  the  Po 
has  filled  up  the  lagoon,  and  Ravenna  is  now  four  miles  from 
the  sea.  The  town  of  Adria,  which  lies  between  the  Po  and 
the  Adige,  at  the  distance  of  some  four  or  live  miles  from  each, 
was  once  a  harbor  famous  enough  to  have  given  its  name  to 
the  Adriatic  sea,  and  it  was  still  a  seaport  in  the  time  of  Au 
gustus.  The  combined  action  of  the  two  rivers  has  so  advanced 
the  coast  line  that  Adria  is  now  about  fourteen  miles  inland, 
and,  in  other  places,  the  deposits  made  within  the  same  period 
by  these  and  other  neighboring  streams  have  a  width  of 
twenty  miles. 

"What  proportion  of  the  earth  with  which  they  are  charged, 
these  rivers  have  borne  out  into  deep  water,  during  the  last  two 
thousand  years,  we  do  not  know,  but  as  they  still  transport 
enormous  quantities,  as  the  North  Adriatic  appears  to  have 
shoaled  rapidly,  and  as  long  islands,  composed  in  great  part 
of  fluviatile  deposits,  have  formed  opposite  their  mouths,  it 
must  evidently  have  been  very  great.  The  floods  of  the  Po 
occur  but  once,  or  sometimes  twice  in  a  year.*  At  other 
times,  its  waters  are  comparatively  limpid  and  seem  to  hold 
no  great  amount  of  mud  or  fine  sand  in  mechanical  suspension ; 
but  at  high  water  it  contains  a  large  proportion  of  solid  matter, 
and  according  to  Lombardini,  it  annually  transports  to  the 

*  Three  centuries  ago,  when  the  declivities  of  the  mountains  still  re 
tained  a  much  larger  proportion  of  their  woods,  the  moderate  annual  floods 
of  the  Po  were  occasioned  by  the  melting  of  the  snows,  and,  as  appears  by 
a  passage  of  Tasso  quoted  by  Castellan!  (DeW  Influenza  delle  Seize,  i,  p.  58, 
note),  they  took  place  in  May.  The  much  more  violent  inundations  of  the 
present  century  are  due  to  rains,  the  waters  of  which  are  no  longer  retained 
by  a  forest  soil,  but  conveyed  at  once  to  the  rivers — and  they  occur  almost 
uniformly  in  the  autumn  or  late  summer.  Castellani,  on  the  page  just 
quoted,  says  that  even  so  late  as  about  1780,  the  Po  required  a  heavy  rain 
of  a  week  to  overflow  its  banks,  but  that  forty  years  later,  it  was  some 
times  raised  to  full  flood  in  a  single  day. 


SEDIMENT   OF   THE   PO.  257 

shores  of  the  Adriatic  not  less  than  42,760,000  cubic  metres, 
or  very  nearly  55,000,000  cubic  yards,  which  carries  the  coast 
line  out  into  the  sea  at  the  rate  of  more  than  200  feet  in  a 
year.*  The  depth  of  the  annual  deposit  is  stated  at  eighteen 
centimetres,  or  rather  more  than  seven  inches,  and  it  would 
cover  an  area  of  not  much  less  than  ninety  square  miles  with 
a  layer  of  that  thickness.  The  Adige,  also,  brings  every  year 
to  the  Adriatic  many  million  cubic  yards  of  Alpine  detritus, 
and  the  contributions  of  the  Brenta  from  the  same  source  are 
far  from  inconsiderable.  The  Adriatic,  however,  receives  but 
a  small  proportion  of  the  soil  and  rock  washed  away  from  the 
Italian  slope  of  the  Alps  and  the  northern  declivity  of  the 
Apennines  by  torrents.  Nearly  the  whole  of  the  debris  thus 
removed  from  the  southern  face  of  the  Alps  between  Monte 
Rosa  and  the  sources  of  the  Adda — a  length  of  watershed  not 
less  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles — is  arrested  by  the  still 
waters  of  the  Lakes  Maggiore  and  Como,  and  some  smaller 
lacustrine  reservoirs,  and  never  reaches  the  sea.  The  Po  is 
not  continuously  embanked  except  for  the  lower  half  of  its 
course.  Above  Piacenza,  therefore,  it  spreads  and  deposits 
sediment  over  a  wide  surface,  and  the  water  withdrawn  from 
it  for  irrigation  at  lower  points,  as  well  as  its  inundations  in 
the  occasional  ruptures  of  its  banks,  carry  over  the  adjacent 
soil  a  large  amount  of  slime. 

If  we  add  to  the  estimated  annual  deposits  of  the  Po  at  its 
mouth,  the  earth  and  sand  transported  to  the  sea  by  the  Adige, 
the  Brenta,  and  other  less  important  streams,  the  prodigious 
mass  of  detritus  swept  into  Lago  Maggiore  by  the  Tosa,  the 
Maggia,  and  the  Ticino,  into  the  lake  of  Como  by  the  Maira 

*  This  change  of  coast  line  cannot  be  ascribed  to  upheaval,  for  a  com 
parison  of  the  level  of  old  buildings — as,  for  instance,  the  church  of  San 
Vitale  and  the  tomb  of  Theodoric  at  Ravenna — with  that  of  the  sea,  tends 
to  prove  a  depression  rather  than  an  elevation  of  their  foundations. 

A  computation  by  a  different  method  makes  the  deposits  at  the  mouth 

of  the  Po  2,123,000  metres  less  ;  but  as  both  of  them  omit  the  gravel  and 

siit  rolled,  if  not  floated,  down  at  ordinary  and  low  water,  we  are  safe  in 

assuming  the  larger  quantity. — Article  last  quoted,  p.  174.  (Seenote, p. 329) 

17 


258  SEDIMENT   OF   THE   PO. 

and  the  Adda,  into  the  lake  of  Garda  by  its  affluents,  and  the 
yet  vaster  heaps  of  pebbles,  gravel,  and  earth  permanently 
deposited  by  the  torrents  near  their  points  of  eruption  from 
mountain  gorges,  or  spread  over  the  wide  plains  at  lower 
levels,  we  may  safely  assume  that  we  have  an  aggregate  of  not 
less  than  four  times  the  quantity  carried  to  the  Adriatic  by  the 
Po,  or  220,000,000  cubic  yards  of  solid  matter,  abstracted  every 
year  from  the  Italian  Alps  and  the  Apennines,  and  removed 
out  of  their  domain  by  the  force  of  running  water.* 

The  present  rate  of  deposit  at  the  mouth  of  the  Po  has  con 
tinued  since  the  year  1600,  the  previous  advance  of  the  coast, 
after  the  year  1200,  having  been  only  one  third  as  rapid.  The 
great  increase  of  erosion  and  transport  is  ascribed  by  Lombar- 
clini  chiefly  to  the  destruction  of  the  forests  in  the  basin  of  that 
river  and  the  valleys  of  its  tributaries,  since  the  beginning  of 
the  seventeenth  century.f  We  have  no  data  to  show  the  rate 
of  deposit  in  any  given  century  before  the  year  1200,  and  it 
doubtless  varied  according  to  the  progress  of  population  and 
the  consequent  extension  of  clearing  and  cultivation.  The 
transporting  power  of  torrents  is  greatest  soon  after  their  for 
mation,  because  at  that  time  their  points  of  delivery  are  lower, 
and,  of  course,  their  general  slope  and  velocity  more  rapid, 
than  after  years  of  erosion  above,  and,  deposit  below,  have 
depressed  the  beds  of  their  mountain  valleys,  and  elevated  the 
channels  of  their  lower  course.  Their  eroding  action  also  is 
most  powerful  at  the  same  period,  both  because  their  mechan 
ical  force  is  then  greatest,  and  because  the  loose  earth  and 

*  Mengotti  estimated  the  mass  of  solid  matter  annually  "united 
to  the  waters  of  the  Po  "  at  822,000,000  cubic  metres,  or  nearly  twenty 
times  as  much  as,  according  to  Lombardini,  that  river  delivers  into  the 
Adriatic.  Castellani  supposes  the  computation  of  Mengotti  to  fall  much 
below  the  truth,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  vastly  larger  quantity 
of  earth  and  gravel  is  washed  down  from  the  Alps  and  the  Apennines  than 
is  carried  to  the  sea. — CASTELLANI,  DelV  Immediata  Influenza  delle  Sehe 
8ul  corso  delle  Acque,  i,  pp.  42,  43. 

I  have  contented  myself  with  assuming  less  than  one  fifth  of  Mengotti1  s 
estimate. 

t  BATJMGAKTEW,  An.  des  Ponts  et  Chaussees,  1847,  ler  s6mestre,  p.  175. 


SEDIMENT   OF   THE   PO.  259 

stones  of  freshly  cleared  forest  ground  are  most  easily  removed. 
Many  of  tlie  Alpine  valleys  west  of  the  Ticino — that  of  the 
Dora  Baltea  for  instance — were  nearly  stripped  of  their  forests 
in  the  days  of  the  Roman  empire,  others  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
and,  of  course,  there  must  have  been,  at  different  periods  before 
the  year  1200,  epochs  when  the  erosion  and  transportation  of 
solid  matter  from  the  Alps  and  the  Apennines  were  as  great  as 
since  the  year  1600. 

Upon  the  whole,  we  shall  not  greatly  err  if  we  assume 
that,  for  a  period  of  not  less  than  two  thousand  years,  the 
walls  of  the  basin  of  the  Po — the  Italian  slope  of  the  Alps, 
and  the  northern  and  northeastern  declivities  of  the  Apen 
nines — have  annually  sent  down  into  the  Adriatic,  the  lakes, 
and  the  plains,  not  less  than  150,000,000  cubic  yards  of  earth 
and  disintegrated  rock.  We  have,  then,  an  aggregate  of 
300,000,000,000  cubic  yards  of  such  material,  which,  allowing 
to  the  mountain  surface  in  question  an  area  of  £0,000,000,000 
square  yards,  would  cover  the  whole  to  the  depth  of  six  yards.* 
There  are  very  large  portions  of  this  area,  where,  as  we  know 
from  ancient  remains — roads,  bridges,  and  the  like — from 
other  direct  testimony,  and  from  geological  considerations, 
very  little  degradation  has  taken  place  within  twenty  cen 
turies,  and  hence  the  quantity  to  be  assigned  to  localities 
where  the  destructive  causes  have  been  most  active  is  in 
creased  in  proportion. 

If  this  vast  mass  of  pulverized  rock  and  earth  were  restored 
to  the  localities  from  which  it  was  derived,  it  certainly  would 
not  obliterate  valleys  and  gorges  hollowed  out  by  great  geo 
logical  causes,  but  it  would  reduce  the  length  and  diminish 
the  depth  of  ravines  of  later  formation,  modify  the  inclination 
of  their  walls,  reclothe  with  earth  many  bare  mountain  ridges, 

*  The  total  superficies  of  the  basin  of  the  Po,  down  to  Ponte  Lagoscuro 
[Ferrara] — a  point  where  it  has  received  all  its  affluents — is  6,938,200  hec 
tares,  that  is,  4,105,600  in  mountain  lands,  2,832,600  in  plain  lands. — 
DTJMOXT,  Traraux  Publics,  etc.,  p.  272. 

These  latter  two  quantities  are  equal  respectively  to  10,145,348,  and 
6,999.638  acres,  or  15,852  and  10,937  square  miles. 


260  SEDIMENT  OF   THE    PO. 

essentially  change  the  line  of  junction  between  plain  and 
mountain,  and  cany  back  a  long  reach  of  the  Adriatic  coast 
many  miles  to  the  west.* 

It  is,  indeed,  not  to  be  supposed  that  all  the  degradation 

*  I  do  not  use  the  numbers  I  Lave  borrowed  or  assumed  as  factors  the 
value  of  which  is  precisely  ascertained ;  nor,  for  the  purposes  of  the 
present  argument,  is  quantitative  exactness  important.  I  employ  numeri 
cal  statements  simply  as  a  means  of  aiding  the  imagination  to  form  a 
general  and  certainly  not  extravagant  idea  of  the  extent  of  geographical 
revolutions  which  man  has  done  much  to  accelerate,  if  not,  strictly  speak 
ing,  to  produce. 

There  is  an  old  proverb,  Dolus  latet  in  generalibus,  and  Arthur  Young 
is  not  the  only  public  economist  who  has  warned  his  readers  against  the 
deceitfulness  of  round  numbers.  I  think,  on  the  contrary,  that  vastly 
more  error  has  been  produced  by  the  affectation  of  precision  in  case?  where 
precision  is  impossible.  In  all  the  great  operations  of  terrestrial  nature, 
the  elements  are  so  numerous  and  so  difficult  of  exact  appreciation,  that, 
until  the  means  of  scientific  observation  and  measurement  are  much  more 
perfected  than  they  now  are,  we  must  content  ourselves  with  general  ap 
proximations.  I  say  terrestrial  nature,  because  in  cosmical  movements  we 
have  fewer  elements  to  deal  with,  and  may  therefore  arrive 'at  much  more 
rigorous  accuracy  in  determination  of  time  and  place  than  we  can  in  fixing 
and  predicting  the  quantities  and  the  epochs  of  variable  natural  phenomena 
on  the  earth's  surface. 

The  value  of  a  high  standard  of  accuracy  in  scientific  observation  can 
hardly  be  overrated  ;  but  habits  of  rigorous  exactness  will  never  be  formed 
by  an  investigator  who  allows  himself  to  trust  implicitly  to  the  numerical 
precision  of  the  results  of  a  few  experiments.  The  wonderful  accuracy  of 
geodetic  measurements  in  modern  times  is,  in  general,  attained  by  taking 
the  mean  of  a  great  number  of  observations  at  every  station,  and  this 
final  precision  is  but  the  mutual  balance  and  compensation  of  numerous 
errors. 

Travellers  are  often  misled  by  local  habits  in  the  use  of  what  may  be 
called  representative  numbers,  where  a  definite  is  put  for  an  indefinite 
quantity.  A  Greek,  who  wished  to  express  the  notion  of  a  great,  but  un 
determined  number,  used  "myriad,  or  ten  thousand;"  a  Eoman,  "six 
hundred  ;  "  an  Oriental,  "  forty,"  or,  at  present,  very  commonly,  "  fifteen 
thousand."  Many  a  tourist  has  gravely  repeated,  as  an  ascertained  fact, 
the  vague  statement  of  the  Arabs  and  the  monks  of  Mount  Sinai,  that  the 
ascent  from  the  convent  of  St.  Catherine  to  the  summit  of  Gebel  Moosa 
counts  "  fifteen  thousand  "  steps,  though  the  difference  of  level  is  barely 
two  thousand  feet,  and  the  "Forty"  Thieves,  the  "forty"  martyr  monks 


SEDIMENT   OF   THE    PO.  261 

of  the  mountains  is  due  to  the  destruction  of  the  forests — that 
the  flanks  of  every  Alpine  valley  in  Central  Europe  below  the 
snow  line  were  once  covered  with  earth  and  green  with  woods, 
but  there  are  not  many  particular  cases,  in  which  we  can,  with 
certainty,  or  even  with  strong  probability,  affirm  the  contrary. 

of  tlie  convent  of  El  Arbain — not  to  speak  of  a  similar  use  of  this  numeral 
in  more  important  cases — have  often  been  understood  as  expressions  of  a 
known  number,  when  in  fact  they  mean  simply  many.  The  number 
t{  fifteen  thousand"  has  found  its  way  to  Rome,  and  De  Quincey  seriously 
informs  us,  on  the  authority  of  a  lady  who  had  been  at  much  pains  to 
ascertain  the  exact  truth,  that,  including  closets  large  enough  for  a  bed,  the 
Vatican  contains  fifteen  thousand  rooms.  Any  one  who  has  observed  the 
vast  dimensions  of  most  of  the  apartments  of  that  structure  will  admit  that 
we  make  a  very  small  allowance  of  space  when  we  assign  a  square  rod, 
sixteen  and  a  half  feet  square,  to  each  room  upon  the  average.  On  an 
acre,  there  might  be  one  hundred  and  sixty  such  rooms,  including  par 
tition  Avails ;  and,  to  contain  fifteen  thousand  of  them,  a  building  must 
cover  more  than  nine  acres,  and  be  ten  stories  high,  or  possess  other 
equivalent  dimensions,  which,  as  every  traveller  knows,  many  times  ex 
ceeds  the  truth. 

That  most  entertaining  writer,  About,  reduces  the  number  of  rooms  in 
the  Vatican,  but  he  compensates  this  reduction  by  increased  dimensions, 
for  lie  uses  the  word  salle,  which  cannot  be  applied  to  closets  barely  large 
enough  to  contain  a  bed.  According  to  him,  there  are  in  that  "  presby- 
tere,"  as  he  irreverently  calls  it,  twelve  thousand  large  rooms  [salles], 
thirty  courts,  and  three  hundred  staircases. — Rome  Contemporaire,  p.  68. 

The  pretended  exactness  of  statistical  tables  is  generally  little  better 
than  an  imposture  ;  and  those  founded  not  on  direct  estimation  by  compe 
tent  observers,  but  on  the  report  of  persons  who  have  no  particular  inter 
est  in  knowing,  but  often  have  a  motive  for  distorting,  the  truth — such  as 
census  returns — are  commonly  to  be  regarded  as  but  vague  guesses  at  the 
actual  fact. 

Fuller,  who,  for  the  combination  of  wit,  wisdom,  fancy,  and  personal 
goodness,  stands  first  in  English  literature,  thus  remarks  on  the  preten 
tious  exactness  of  historical  and  statistical  writers  :  "  I  approve  the  plain, 
country  By- word,  as  containing  much  Innocent  Simplicity  therein, 

'  Almost  and  very  nigh 
Have  saved  many  a  Lie? 

So  have  the  Latines  their  prope,  fere,  juxta,  circiter,  plus  minus,  used 
in  matters  of  fact  by  the  most  authentic  Historians.  Yea,  we  may  observe 
that  the  Spirit  of  Truth  itself,  where  Numbers  and  Measures  are  concerned, 


262  ORIGIN   OF   RIVEKS. 

"We  cannot  measure  the  share  which  human  action  has  had 
in  augmenting  the  intensity  of  causes  of  mountain  degradation, 
but  we  know  that  the  clearing  of  the  woods  has,  in  some  cases, 
produced  within  two  or  three  generations,  effects  as  blasting 
as  those  generally  ascribed  to  geological  convulsions,  and  has 
laid  waste  the  face  of  the  earth  more  hopelessly  than  if  it  had 
been  buried  by  a  current  of  lava  or  a  shower  of  volcanic  sand. 
"New  torrents  are  forming  every  year  in  the  Alps.  Tradition, 
written  records,  and  analogy  concur  to  establish  the  belief  that 
the  ruin  of  most  of  the  now  desolate  valleys  in  those  mountains 
is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  same  cause,  and  authentic  descriptions 
of  the  irresistible  force  of  the  torrent  show  that,  aided  by  frost 
and  heat,  it  is  adequate  to  level  Mont  Blanc  and  Monte  Eosa 
themselves,  unless  new  upheavals  shall  maintain  their  elevation. 

It  has  been  contended  that  all  rivers  which  take  their  rise 
in  mountains  originated  in  torrents.  These,  it  is  said,  have 
lowered  the  summits  by  gradual  erosion,  and,  with  the  ma 
terial  thus  derived,  have  formed  shoals  in  the  sea  which  once 
beat  against  the  cliffs ;  then,  by  successive  deposits,  gradually 
raised  them  above  the  surface,  and  finally  expanded  them  into 
broad  plains  traversed  by  gently  flowing  streams.  If  we  could 
go  back  to  earlier  geological  periods,  we  should  find  this  theory 
often  verified,  and  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  the  torrents  go  on 

in  Times,  Places,  and  Persons,  useth  the  aforesaid  Modifications,  save  in 
such  cases  where  some  mystery  contained  in  the  number  requireth  a  par 
ticular  specification  thereof: 


In  Times. 
Daniel,  5  :  S3. 
Luke,     3 :  23. 


In  Places. 
Luke,  24:13. 


In  Persons. 
Exodus,  12 : 37. 
Acts,         2 : 41. 


John,     6 : 10. 

None  therefore  can  justly  find  fault  with  me,  if,  on  the  like  occasion,  I 
have  secured  myself  with  the  same  Qualifications.  Indeed,  such  Historians 
who  grind  their  Intelligence  to  the  powder  of  fraction,  pretending  to  cleave 
the  pin,  do  sometimes  misse  the  But.  Thus,  one  reporteth,  how  in  the 
Persecution  under  Diocletian,  there  were  neither  under  nor  over,  but  just 
nine  hundred,  ninety -nine  martyrs.  Yea,  generally  those  that  trade  in 
such  Retail-ware,  and  deal  in  such  small  parcells,  may  by  tlie  ignorant  be 
commended  for  their  care,  but  condemned  by  the  judicious  for  their 
ridiculous  curiosity." — TJie  History  of  the  Worthies  of  England,  i,  p.  59. 


EXTINGUISHED    TORRENTS.  263 

at  the  present  hour,  depressing  still  lower  the  ridges  of  the 
Alps  and  the  Apennines,  raising  still  higher  the  plains  of 
Lombardy  and  Provence,  extending  the  coast  still  farther  into 
the  Adriatic  and  the  Mediterranean,  reducing  the  inclination 
of  their  own  beds  and  the  rapidity  of  their  flow,  and  thus 
tending  to  become  river-like  in  character. 

There  are  cases  where  torrents  cease  their  ravages  of  them 
selves,  in  consequence  of  some  change  in  the  condition  of  the 
basin  where  they  originate,  or  of  the  face  of  the  mountain  at  a 
higher  level,  while  the  plain  or  the  sea  below  remains  in  sub 
stantially  the  same  state  as  before.  If  a  torrent  rises  in  a 
small  valley  containing  no  great  amount  of  earth  and  of  disin 
tegrated  or  loose  rock,  it  may,  in  the  course  of  a  certain  period, 
wash  out  all  the  transportable  material,  and  if  the  valley  is 
then  left  with  solid  walls,  it  will  cease  to  furnish  debris  to  be 
carried  down  by  floods.  If,  in  this  state  of  things,  a  new 
channel  be  formed  at  an  elevation  above  the  head  of  the  val 
ley,  it  may  divert  a  part,  or  even  the  whole  of  the  rain  water 
and  melted  snow  which  would  otherwise  have  flowed  into  it, 
and  the  once  furious  torrent  now  sinks  to  the  rank  of  a  hum 
ble  and  harmless  brooklet.  "  In  traversing  this  department," 
says  Surell,  "  one  often  sees,  at  the  outlet  of  a  gorge,  a  flat 
tened  hillock,  with  a  fan-shaped  outline  and  regular  slopes  ;  it 
is  the  bed  of  dejection  of  an  ancient  torrent.  It  sometimes 
requires  long  and  careful  study  to  detect  the  primitive  form, 
masked  as  it  is  by  groves  of  trees,  by  cultivated  fields,  and 
often  by  houses,  but,  when  examined  closely,  and  from  differ 
ent  points  of  view,  its  characteristic  figure  manifestly  appears, 
and  its  true  history  cannot  be  mistaken.  Along  the  hillock 
flows  a  streamlet,  issuing  from  the  ravine,  and  quietly  watering 
the  fields.  This  was  originally  a  torrent,  and  in  the  back 
ground  may  be  discovered  its  mountain  basin.  Such  extin 
guished  torrents,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  are  numerous."  * 

*  SURELL,  Les  Torrents  des  Hautes  Alpes,  chap.  xxiv.  In  such  cases, 
the  clearing  of  the  ground,  which,  in  consequence  of  a  temporary  diver 
sion  of  the  waters,  or  from  some  other  cause,  has  become  rewooded,  some 
times  renews  the  ravages  of  the  torrent.  Thus,  on  the  left  bank  of  the 


MOUNTAIN    SLIDES. 

But  for  the  intervention  of  man  and  domestic  animals,  these 
latter  beneficent  revolutions  would  occur  more  frequently,  pro 
ceed  more  rapidly.  The  new  scarped  mountains,  the  hillocks 
of  debris,  the  plains  elevated  by  sand  and  gravel  spread  over 
them,  the  shores  freshly  formed  by  fluviatile  deposits,  would 
clothe  themselves  with  shrubs  and  trees,  the  intensity  of  the 
causes  of  degradation  would  be  diminished,  and  nature  would 
thus  regain  her  ancient  equilibrium.  But  these  processes, 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  demand,  not  years,  generations, 
but  centuries ;  *  and  man,  who  even  now  finds  scarce  breathing 
room  on  this  vast  globe,  cannot  retire  from  the  Old  World  to 
some  yet  undiscovered  continent,  and  wait  for  the  slow  action 
of  such  causes  to  replace,  by  a  new  creation,  the  Eden  he  has 
wasted. 

Mountain  Slides. 

I  have  said  that  the  mountainous  regions  of  the  Atlantic 
States  of  the  American  Union  are  exposed  to  similar  ravages, 
and  I  may  add  that  there  is,  in  some  cases,  reason  to  appre 
hend  from  the  same  cause  even  more  appalling  calamities  than 
those  which  I  have  yet  described.  The  slide  in  the  Notch  of 
the  White  Mountains,  by  which  the  Willey  family  lost  their 
lives,  is  an  instance  of  the  sort  I  refer  to,  though  I  am  not  able 
to  say  that  in  this  particular  case,  the  slip  of  the  earth  and 

Durance,  a  wooded  declivity  had  been  formed  by  the  debris  brought  down 
by  torrents,  which  had  extinguished  themselves  after  having  swept  off 
much  of  the  superficial  strata  of  the  mountain  of  Morgon.  "  All  this  dis 
trict  was  covered  with  woods,  which  have  now  been  thinned  out  and  are 
perishing  from  day  to  day  ;  consequently,  the  torrents  have  recommenced 
their  devastations,  and  if  the  clearings  continue,  this  declivity,  now  fertile, 
will  be  ruined,  like  so  many  others. "—Id.,  p.  155. 

*  Where  a  torrent  has  not  been  long  in  operation,  and  earth  still  re 
mains  mixed  with  the  rocks  and  gravel  it  heaps  up  at  its  point  of  eruption, 
vegetation  soon  starts  up  and  prospers,  if  protected  from  encroachment. 
In  Provence,  "  several  communes  determined,  about  ten  years  ago,  to 
reserve  the  soils  thus  wasted,  that  is,  to  abandon  them  for  a  certain  time, 
to  spontaneous  vegetation,  which  was  not  slow  in  making  its  appear 
ance." — BEOQUEREL,  DCS  Climate,  p.  315. 


MOUNTAIN    SLIDES.  265 

rock  was  produced  by  the  denudation  of  the  surface.  It  may 
have  been  occasioned  by  this  cause,  or  by  the  construction  of 
the  road  through  the  Notch,  the  excavations  for  which,  per 
haps,  cut  through  the  buttresses  that  supported  the  sloping 
strata  above. 

Not  to  speak  of  the  fall  of  earth  when  the  roots  which  held 
it  together,  and  the  bed  of  leaves  and  mould  which  sheltered 
it  both  from  disintegrating  frost  and  from  sudden  drenching 
and  dissolution  by  heavy  showers,  are  gone,  it  is  easy  to  see 
that,  in  a  climate  with  severe  winters,  the  removal  of  the  for 
est,  and,  consequently,  of  the  soil  it  had  contributed  to  form, 
might  cause  the  displacement  and  descent  of  great  masses  of 
rock.  The  woods,  the  vegetable  mould,  and  the  soil  beneath, 
protect  the  rocks  they  cover  from  the  direct  action  of  heat  and 
cold,  and  from  the  expansion  and  contraction  which  accom 
pany  them.  Most  rocks,  while  covered  with  earth,  contain  a 
considerable  quantity  of  water.*  A  fragment  of  rock  per 
vaded  with  moisture  cracks  and  splits,  if  throwTn  into  a  fur 
nace,  and  sometimes  with  a  loud  detonation ;  and  it  is  a  familiar 
observation  that  the  fire,  in  burning  over  newly  cleared  lands, 
breaks  up  and  sometimes  almost  pulverizes  the  stones.  This 
effect  is  due  partly  to  the  unequal  expansion  of  the  stone,  partly 
to  the  action  of  heat  on  the  water  it  contains  in  its  pores.  The 
sun,  suddenly  let  in  upon  rock  which  had  been  covered  with 
moist  earth  for  centuries,  produces  more  or  less  disintegration 
in  the  same  way,  and  the  stone  is  also  exposed  to  chemical 
influences  from  which  it  was  sheltered  before.  But  in  the 
climate  of  the  United  States  as  well  as  of  the  Alps,  frost  is  a 
still  more  powerful  agent  in  breaking  up  mountain  masses. 

*  Rock  is  permeable  by  water  to  a  greater  extent  than  is  generally  sup 
posed.  Freshly  quarried  marble,  and  even  granite,  as  well  as  most  other 
stones,  are  sensibly  heavier,  as  well  as  softer  and  more  easily  wrought, 
than  after  they  are  dried  and  hardened  by  air-seasoning.  Many  sand 
stones  are  porous  enough  to  serve  as  filters  for  liquids,  and  much  of  that 
of  Upper  Egypt  and  Nubia  hisses  audibly  when  thrown  into  water,  from 
the  escape  of  the  air  forced  out  of  it  by  hydrostatic  pressure  and  the 
capillary  attraction  of  the  pores  for  water.  See  Appc.n'1!?,  Xo.  28. 


266  MOUNTAIN    SLIDES. 

The  soil  that  protects  the  lime  and  sand  stone,  the  slate  and 
the  granite  from  the  influence  of  the  sun,  also  prevents  the 
water  which  filters  into  their  crevices  and  between  their  strata 
from  freezing  in  the  hardest  winters,  and  the  moisture  de 
scends,  in  a  liquid  form,  until  it  escapes  in  springs,  or  passes 
off  by  deep  subterranean  channels.  But  when  the  ridges  are 
laid  bare,  the  wrater  of  the  autumnal  rains  fills  the  minutest 
pores  and  veins  and  fissures  and  lines  of  separation  of  tin 
rocks,  then  suddenly  freezes,  and  bursts  asunder  huge,  and 
apparently  solid  blocks  of  adamantine  stone. *  Where  the 
strata  are  inclined  at  a  considerable  angle,  the  freezing  of  a 
thin  film  of  water  over  a  large  interstratal  area  might  occasion 
a  slide  that  should  cover  miles  with  its  ruins ;  and  shnilai 
results  might  be  produced  by  the  simple  hydrostatic  pressure 
of  a  column  of  water,  admitted  by  the  removal  of  the  covering 
of  earth  to  flow  into  a  crevice  faster  than  it  could  escape 
through  orifices  below. 

Earth  or  rather  mountain  slides,  compared  to  which  tlu 
catastrophe  that  buried  the  Willcy  family  in  jSTew  Hampshire 
was  but  a  pinch  of  dust,  have  often  occurred  in  the  Swiss 
Italian,  and  French  Alps.  The  land  slip,  which  overwhelmed 

*  Palissy  had  observed  the  action  of  frost  in  disintegrating  rock,  and  In 
thus  describes  it,  in  his  essay  on  the  formation  of  ice  :  "  I  know  that  tlu 
stones  of  the  mountains  of  Ardennes  be  harder  than  marble.  Neverthe 
less,  the  people  of  that  country  do  not  quarry  the  said  stones  in  winter,  fo 
that  they  be  subject  to  frost ;  and  many  times  the  rocks  have  been  seen  t- 
fall  without  being  cut,  by  means  whereof  many  people  have  been  killed 
when  the  said  rocks  were  thawing."  Palissy  was  ignorant  of  the  expan 
Bion  of  water  in  freezing — in  fact  he  supposed  that  the  mechanical  force 
exerted  by  freezing  water  was  due  to  compression,  not  dilatation — and 
therefore  he  ascribes  to  thawing  alone  effects  resulting  not  less  from  con 
gelation. 

Various  forces  combine  to  produce  the  stone  avalanches  of  the  higher 
Alps,  the  fall  of  which  is  one  of  the  greatest  dangers  incurred  by  the  ad 
venturous  explorers  of  those  regions — the  direct  action  of  the  sun  upon 
the  stone,  the  expansion  of  freezing  water,  and  the  loosening  of  masses 
of  rock  by  the  thawing  of  the  ice  which  supported  them  or  held  them 
together. 


MOUNTAIN"    SLIDES.  267 

and  covered  to  the  depth  of  seventy  feet,  the  town  of  Plurs  in 
the  valley  of  the  Maira,  on  the  night  of  the  4th  of  September, 
1618,  sparing  not  a  soul  of  a  population  of  2,430  inhabitants, 
is  one  of  the  most  memorable  of  these  catastrophes,  and  the 
fall  of  the  Kossberg  or  Rufiberg,  which  destroyed  the  little  town 
of  Goldau  in  Switzerland,  and  450  of  its  people,  on  the  2d  of 
September,  1806,  is  almost  equally  celebrated.  In  1771,  ac 
cording  to  "Wessely,  the  mountain  peak  Piz,  near  Alleghe  in 
the  province  of  Belluno,  slipped  into  the  bed  of  the  Cordevole, 
a  tributary  of  the  Piave,  destroying  in  its  fall  three  hamlets 
and  sixty  lives.  The  rubbish  filled  the  valley  for  a  distance 
of  nearly  two  miles,  and,  by  damming  up  the  waters  of  the 
Cordevole,  formed  a  lake  about  three  miles  long,  mid  a  hun 
dred  and  fifty  feet  deep,  which  still  subsists,  though  reduced 
to  half  its  original  length  by  the  wearing  down  of  its  outlet.* 

On  the  14th  of  February,  1855,  the  hill  of  Belrnonte,  a  little 
below  the  parish  of  San  Stelano,  in  Tuscany,  slid  into  the  val 
ley  of  the  Tiber,  which  consequently  flooded  the  village  to  the 
depth  of  fifty  feet,  and  was  finally  drained  off  by  a  tunnel. 
The  mass  of  debris  is  stated  to  have  been  about  3,500  feet 
long,  1,000  wide,  and  not  less  than  COO  high.f 

Such  displacements  of  earth  and  rocky  strata  rise  to  the 
magnitude  of  geological  convulsions,  but  they  are  of  so  rare 
occurrence  in  countries  still  covered  by  the  primitive  forest,  so 
common  where  the  mountains  have  been  stripped  of  their 
native  covering,  and,  in  many  cases,  so  easily  explicable  by 
the  drenching  of  incohesive  earth  from  rain,  or  the  free  admis 
sion  of  water  between  the  strata  of  rocks — both  of  which  a 
coating  of  vegetation  would  have  prevented — that  we  are  jus 
tified  in  ascribing  them  for  the  most  part  to  the  same  cause  as 

*  WESSSLY,  Die  Ocsterreichischcn  Alpenldnder  und  Hire  Forste,  pp.  125, 
126.  Weasely  records  several  other  more  or  less  similar  occurrences  in 
the  Austrian  Alps.  Some  of  them,  certainly,  are  not  to  be  ascribed  to  the 
removal  of  the  woods,  but  in  most  cases  they  are  clearly  traceable  to  that 
cause. 

t  BIANCIII,  Appendix  to  the  Italian  translation  of  Mrs.  SOMERVILLE'S 
Physical  Geography,  p.  xxxvi. 


MOUNTAIN   SLIDES. 

that  to  which  the  destructive  effects  of  mountain  torrents  are 
chiefly  due — the  felling  of  the  woods. 

In  nearly  every  case  of  this  sort  the  circumstances  of  which 
are  known,  the  immediate  cause  of  the  slip  has  been,  either  an 
earthquake,  the  imbibition  of  wrater  in  large  quantities  by  bare 
earth,  or  its  introduction  between  or  beneath  solid  strata.  If 
water  insinuates  itself  between  the  strata,  it  creates  a  sliding 
surface,  or  it  may,  by  its  expansion  in  freezing,  separate  beds 
of  rock,  which  had  been  nearly  continuous  before,  widely 
enough  to  allow  the  gravitation  of  the  superincumbent  mass 
to  overcome  the  resistance  afforded  by  inequalities  of  face  and 
by  friction  ;  if  it  finds  its  way  beneath  hard  earth  or  rock 
reposing  on  clay  or  other  bedding  of  similar  properties,  it  con 
verts  the  supporting  layer  into  a  semi-fluid  mud,  which  opposes 
no  obstacle  to  the  sliding  of  the  strata  above. 

The  upper  part  of  the  mountain  which  buried -Goldau  was 
composed  of  a  hard  but  brittle  conglomerate,  called  nagelftue, 
resting  on  an  unctuous  clay,  and  inclining  rapidly  toward  the 
village.  Much  earth  remained  upon  the  rock,  in  irregular 
masses,  but  the  woods  had  been  felled,  and  the  water  had  free 
access  to  the  surface,  and  to  the  crevices  which  sun  and  frost 
had  already  produced  in  the  rock,  and  of  course,  to  the  slimy 
stratum  beneath.  The  whole  summer  of  1806  had  been  very 
wet,  and  an  almost  incessant  deluge  of  rain  had  fallen  the  day 
preceding  the  catastrophe,  as  well  as  on  that  of  its  occurrence. 
All  conditions  then,  were  favorable  to  the  sliding  of  the  rock, 
and,  in  obedience  to  the  laws  of  gravitation,  it  precipitated  itself 
into  the  valley  as  soon  as  its  adhesion  to  the  earth  beneath  it 
was  destroyed  by  the  conversion  of  the  latter  into  a  viscous 
paste.  The  mass  that  fell  measured  between  two  and  a  half 
and  three  miles  in  length  by  one  thousand  feet  in  width,  and 
its  average  thickness  is  thought  to  have  been  about  a  hundred 
feet.  The  highest  portion  of  the  mountain  was  more  than 
three  thousand  feet  above  the  village,  and  the  momentum 
acquired  by  the  rocks  and  earth  in  their  descent  carried  huge 
blocks  of  stone  far  up  the  opposite  slope  of  the  Rigi. 

The  Piz,  wliicb  fell  into  the  Cordevole,  rested  on  a  steeply 


PROTECTION   AGAINST   AVALANCHES.  269 

inclined  stratum  of  limestone,  with  a  thin  layer  of  calcareous 
marl  intervening,  which,  by  long  exposure  to  frost  and  the 
infiltration  of  water,  Lad  lost  its  original  consistence,  and 
become  a  loose  and  slippery  mass  instead  of  a  cohesive  and 
tenacious  bed. 


Protection  against  fall  of  Rocks  and  Avalanches  l>y  Trees. 

Forests  often  subserve  a  valuable  purpose  in  preventing 
the  fall  of  rocks,  by  mere  mechanical  resistance.  Trees,  as 
well  as  herbaceous  vegetation,  grow  in  the  Alps  upon  declivi 
ties  of  surprising  steepness  of  inclination,  and  the  traveller  sees 
both  luxuriant  grass  and  flourishing  woods  on  slopes  at  which 
the  soil,  in  the  dry  air  of  lower  regions,  would  crumble  and 
fall  by  the  weight  of  its  own  particles.  "When  loose  rocks  lie 
scattered  on  the  face  of  these  declivities,  they  are  held  in  place 
by  the  trunks  of  the  trees,  and  it  is  very  common  to  observe  a 
stone  that  weighs  hundreds  of  pounds,  perhaps  even  tons,  rest 
ing  against  a  tree  which  has  stopped  its  progress  just  as  it  was 
beginning  to  slide  down  to  a  lower  level.  When  a  forest  in 
such  a  position  is  cut,  these  blocks  lose  their  support,  and  a 
single  wet  season  is  enough  not  only  to  bare  the  face  of  a  con 
siderable  extent  of  rock,  but  to  cover  with  earth  and  stone 
many  acres  of  fertile  soil  below.* 

In  Switzerland  arid  other  snowy  and  mountainous  coun 
tries,  forests  render  a  most  important  service  by  preventing 
the  formation  and  fall  of  destructive  avalanches,  and  in  many 
parts  of  the  Alps  exposed  to  this  catastrophe,  the  woods  are 
protected,  though  too  often  ineffectually,  by  law.  No  forest, 
indeed,  could  arrest  a  large  avalanche  once  in  motion,  but  the 
mechanical  resistance  afforded  by  the  trees  prevents  their 

*  See  in  KOHL,  Alpenreisen,  i,  120,  an  account  of  the  ruin  of  fields  and 
pastures,  and  even  of  the  destruction  of  a  broad  belt  of  forest,  by  the  fall 
of  rocks  in  consequence  of  cutting  a  few  large  trees.  Cattle  are  very  often 
killed  in  Switzerland  by  rock  avalanches,  and  their  owners  secure  them 
selves  from  loss  by  insurance  against  this  risk  as  against  damage  by  fire 
or  hail. 


270  CAUSES   OF  THE   DESTEUCTION   OF  THE  WOODS. 

formation,  both  by  obstructing  the  wind,  which  gives  to  the 
dry  snow  of  the  Staub-Lawine,  or  dust  avalanche,  its  first 
impulse,  and  by  checking  the  disposition  of  moist  snow  to 
gather  itself  into  what  is  called  the  Rutsch-Lawine,  or  sliding 
avalanche.  Marschand  states  that,  the  very  first  winter  after 
the  felling  of  the  trees  on  the  higher  part  of  a  declivity  be 
tween  Saanen  and  Gsteig  where  the  snow  had  never  been 
known  to  slide,  an  avalanche  formed  itself  in  the  clearing, 
thundered  down  the  mountain,  and  overthrew  and  carried  with 
it  a  hitherto  unviolated  forest  to  the  amount  of  nearly  a  million 
cubic  feet  of  timber.*  The  path  once  opened  down  the  flanks 
of  the  mountain,  the  evil  is  almost  beyond  remedy.  The  snow 
sometimes  carries  off  the  earth  from  the  face  of  the  rock,  or,  if 
the  soil  is  left,  fresh  slides  every  winter  destroy  the  young 
plantations,  and  the  restoration  of  the  wood  becomes  impos 
sible.  The  track  widens  with  every  new  avalanche.  Dwell 
ings  and  their  occupants  are  buried  in  the  snow,  or  swept 
away  by  the  rushing  mass,  or  by  the  furious  blasts  it  occasions 
through  the  displacement  of  the  air ;  roads  and  bridges  are 
destroyed ;  rivers  blocked  up,  which  swell  till  they  overflow 
the  valley  above,  and  then,  bursting  their  snowy  barrier,  flood 
the  fields  below  with  all  the  horrors  of  a  winter  inundation. f 

Principal  Causes  of  the  Destruction  of  the  Forest. 

The  needs  of  agriculture  are  the  most  familiar  cause  of  the 
destruction  of  the  forest  in  new  countries ;  for  not  only  does 
an  increasing  population  demand  additional  acres  to  grow  the 

*  Entwaldiing  der  Gebirge,  p.  41. 

t  The  importance  of  the  wood  in  preventing  avalanches  is  well  illus 
trated  by  the  fact  that,  where  the  forest  is  wanting,  the  inhabitants  of 
localities  exposed  to  snow  slides  often  supply  the  place  of  the  trees  by 
driving  stakes  through  the  snow  into  the  ground,  and  thns  checking  its 
propensity  to  slip.  The  woods  themselves  are  sometimes  thus  protected 
against  avalanches  originating  on  slopes  above  them,  and  as  a  further 
security,  small  trees  are  cut  down  along  the  upper  line  of  the  forest,  and 
laid  against  the  trunks  of  larger  trees,  transversely  to  the  path  of  the 
slide,  to  serve  as  a  fence  or  dam  to  the  motion  of  an  incipient  avalanche, 


THE   LUMBER   TRADE.  271 

vegetables  which  feed  it  and  its  domestic  animals,  but  the  slov 
enly  husbandry  of  the  border  settler  soon  exhausts  the  lux 
uriance  of  his  first  fields,  and  compels  him  to  remove  his 
household  gods  to  a  fresher  soil.  With  growing  numbers,  too, 
come  the  many  arts  for  which  wood  is  the  material.  The 
demands  of  the  near  and  the  distant  market  for  this  product 
excite  the  cupidity  of  the  hardy  forester,  and  a  few  years  of 
that  wild  industry  of  which  Springer's  "  Forest  Life  and  For 
est  Trees  "  so  vividly  depicts  the  dangers  and  the  triumphs, 
suffice  to  rob  the  most  inaccessible  glens  of  their  fairest  orna 
ments.  The  value  of  timber  increases  with  its  dimensions  in 
almost  geometrical  proportion,  and  the  tallest,  most  vigorous, 
and  most  symmetrical  trees  fall  the  first  sacrifice.  This  is  a 
fortunate  circumstance  for  the  remainder  of  the  wood  ;  for  the 
impatient  lumberman  contents  himself  with  felling  a  few  of 
the  best  trees,  and  then  hurries  on  to  take  his  tithe  of  still 
virgin  groves. 

The  unparalleled  facilities  for  internal  navigation,  afforded 
by  the  numerous  rivers  of  the  present  and  former  British  colo 
nial  possessions  in  North  America,  have  proved  very  fatal  to 
the  forests  of  that  continent.  Quebec  has  become  a  centre  for 
a  lumber  trade,  which,  in  the  bulk  of  its  material,  and,  conse-  / 
quentiy,  in  the  tonnage  required  for  its  transportation,  rivals 
the  commerce  of  the  greatest  European  cities.  Immense  rafts 
are  collected  at  Quebec  from  the  great  Lakes,  from  the  Ottawa, 
and  from  all  the  other  tributaries  which  unite  to  swell  the  cur 
rent  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  help  it  to  struggle  against  its 
mighty  tides.*  Ships,  of  burden  formerly  undreamed  of,  have 
been  built  to  convey  the  timber  to  the  markets  of  Europe,  and 
during  the  summer  months  the  St.  Lawrence  is  almost  as 

which  may  by  this  means  be  arrested  before  it  acquires  a  destructive 
velocity  and  force. 

*  The  tide  rises  at  Quebec  to  the  height  of  twenty-five  feet,  and  when 
it  is  aided  by  a  northeast  wind,  it  flows  with  almost  irresistible  violence. 
Rafts  containing  several  hundred  thousand  cubic  feet  of  timber  are  often 
caught  by  the  flood  tide,  torn  to  pieces,  and  dispersed  for  miles  along  the 
shores. 


272  THE   LUMBER   TRADE. 

crowded  with  vessels  as  the  Thames.*  Of  late,  Chicago,  in 
Illinois,  has  been  one  of  the  greatest  lumber  as  well  as  grain 
depots  of  the  United  States,  and  it  receives  and  distributes 
contributions  from  all  the  forests  in  the  States  washed  by  Lake 
Michigan,  as  well  as  from  some  more  distant  points. 

The  operations  of  the  lumberman  involve  other  dangers  to 
the  woods  besides  the  loss  of  the  trees  felled  by  him.  The 
narrow  clearings  around  his  shanties  f  form  openings  which  let 
in  the  wind,  and  thus  sometimes  occasion  the  overthrow  of 
thousands  of  trees,  the  fall  of  which  dams  up  small  streams, 
and  creates  bogs  by  the  spreading  of  the  waters,  while  the 
decaying  trunks  facilitate  the  multiplication  of  the  insects 
wilieh  breed  in  dead  wood,  and  are,  some  of  them,  injurious  to 
living  trees.  The  escape  and  spread  of  camp  fires,  however,  is 
the  most  devastating  of  all  the  causes  of  destruction  that  find 
their  origin  in  the  operations  of  the  lumberman.  The  propor 
tion  of  trees  fit  for  industrial  uses  is  small  in  all  primitive 
woods.  Only  these  fall  before  the  forester's  axe,  but  the  fire 
destroys,  indiscriminately,  every  age  and  every  species  of  tree.:): 

*  One  of  these,  the  Baron  of  Renfrew — so  named  from  one  of  the  titles 
of  the  kings  of  England — built  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  measured  5,000 
tons.  They  were  little  else  than  rafts,  being  almost  solid  masses  of  timber 
designed  to  be  taken  to  pieces  and  sold  as  lumber  on  arriving  at  their  port 
of  destination. 

The  lumber  trade  at  Quebec  is  still  very  large.  According  to  a  recent 
article  in  the  Revue  dcs  Deux  Mondes,  that  city  exported,  in  1860,  30,000,000 
cubic  feet  of  squared  timber,  and  400,000,000  square  fett  of  "planches.' 
The  thickness  of  the  boards  is  not  stated,  but  I  believe  they  are  generally 
cut  an  inch  and  a  quarter  thick  for  the  Quebec  trade,  and  as  they  shrink 
somewhat  in  drying,  we  may  estimate  ten  square  for  one  cubic  foot 
of  boards.  This  gives  a  total  of  70,000,000  cubic  feet.  The  specific 
gravity  of  white  pine  is  .554,  and  the  weight  of  this  quantity  of  lumber, 
very  little  of  which  is  thoroughly  seasoned,  would  exceed  a  million  of  tons, 
even  supposing  it  to  consist  wholly  of  wood  as  light  as  pine.  New  Bruns 
wick,  too,  exports  a  large  amount  of  lumber. 

t  This  name,  from  the  French  chantier,  which  has  a  wider  meaning,  is 
'applied  in  America  to  temporary  huts  or  habitations  erected  for  the  con 
venience  of  forest  life,  or  in  connection  with  works  of  material  improvement. 

J  Trees  differ  much  in  their  power  of  resisting  the  action  of  forest  fires. 


THE    LUMBEK   TKADE.  273 

While,  then,  without  much  injury  to  the  younger  growths,  the 
native  forest  will  bear  several  "  cuttings  over  "  in  a  generation 
— for  the  increasing  value  of  lumber  brings  into  use,  every 
four  or  five  years,  a  quality  of  timber  which  had  been  before 
rejected  as  unmarketable — a  fire  may  render  the  declivity  of  a 
mountain  unproductive  for  a  century.* 

Different  woods  vary  greatly  in  combustibility,  and  even  when  their  bark 
is  scarcely  scorched,  they  are,  partly  in  consequence  of  physiological  char 
acter,  and  partly  from  the  greater  or  less  depth  at  which  their  roots  habit 
ually  lie  below  the  surface,  very  differently  affected  by  running  fires.  The 
white  pine,  Pinus  strobus,  as  it  is  the  most  valuable,  is  also  perhaps  the 
most  delicate  tree  of  the  American  forest,  while  its  congener,  the  Northern 
pitch  pine,  Finns  rigida,  is  less  injured  by  fire  than  any  other  tree  of  that 
country.  I  have  heard  experienced  lumbermen  maintain  that  the  growth 
of  this  pine  was  even  accelerated  by  a  fire  brisk  enough  to  destroy  all 
other  trees,  and  I  have  myself  seen  it  still  flourishing  after  a  conflagration 
which  had  left  not  a  green  leaf  but  its  own  in  the  wood,  and  actually 
throwing  out  fresh  foliage,  when  the  old  had  been  quite  burnt  off  and  the 
bark  almost  converted  into  charcoal.  The  wood  of  the  pitch  pine  is  of 
comparatively  little  value  for  the  joiner,  but  it  is  useful  for  very  many  pur 
poses.  Its  rapidity  of  growth  in  even  poor  soils,  its  hardihood,  and  its 
abundant  yield  of  resinous  products,  entitle  it  to  much  more  consideration, 
as  a  plantation  tree,  than  it  has  hitherto  received  in  Europe  or  America. 

*  Between  fifty  and  sixty  years  ago,  a  steep  mountain  with  which  I  am 
very  familiar,  composed  of  metamorphic  rock,  and  at  that  time  covered 
with  a  thick  coating  of  soil  and  a  dense  primeval  forest,  was  accidentally 
burnt  over.  The  fire  took  place  in  a  very  dry  season,  the  slope  of  the 
mountain  was  too  rapid  to  retain  much  water,  and  the  conflagration  was 
of  an  extraordinarily  fierce  character,  consuming  the  wood  almost  entirely, 
burning  the  leaves  and  combustible  portion  of  the  mould,  and  in  many 
places  cracking  and  disintegrating  the  rock  beneath.  The  rains  of  the  fol 
lowing  autumn  carried  off  much  of  the  remaining  soil,  and  the  mountain 
side  was  nearly  bare  of  wood  for  two  or  three  years  afterward.  At 
length,  a  new  crop  of  trees  sprang  up  and  grew  vigorously,  and  the  moun 
tain  is  now  thickly  covered  again.  But  the  depth  of  mould  and  earth  is 
too  small  to  allow  the  trees  to  reach  maturity.  When  they  attain  to  the 
diameter  of  about  six  inches,  they  uniformly  die,  and  this  they  will  no 
doubt  continue  to  do  until  the  decay  of  leaves  and  wood  on  the  surface, 
and  the  decomposition  of  the  subjacent  rock,  shall  have  formed,  perhaps 
hundreds  of  years  hence,  a  stratum  of  soil  thick  enough  to  support  a  full- 
grown  forest. 

18 


274  AMERICAN   FOREST   TREES. 


American  Forest  Trees 

The  remaining  forests  of  the  Northern  States  and  of  Can 
ada  no  longer  boast  the  mighty  pines  which  almost  rivalled  the 
gigantic  Sequoia  of  California ;  and  the  growth  of  the  larger 
forest  trees  is  so  slow,  after  they  have  attained  to  a  certain 
size,  that  if  every  pine  and  oak  were  spared  for  two  centuries, 
the  largest  now  standing  would  not  reach  the  stature  of  hun 
dreds  recorded  to  have  been  cut  within  two  or  three  genera 
tions.*  Dr.  Williams,  who  wrote  about  sixty  years  ago,  states 
the  following  as  the  dimensions  of  "  such  trees  as  are  esteemed 
large  ones  of  their  kind  in  that  part  of  America  "  [Vermont], 
qualifying  his  account  with  the  remark  that  his  measurements 
"  do  not  denote  the  greatest  which  nature  has  produced  of 

*  The  growth  of  the  white  pine,  on  a  good  soil  and  in  open  ground,  is 
rather  rapid  until  it  reaches  the  diameter  of  a  couple  of  feet,  after  which  it 
is  much  slower.  The  favorite  habitat  of  this  tree  is  light  sandy  earth.  On 
this  soil,  and  in  a  dense  wood,  it  requires  a  century  to  attain  the  diameter 
of  a  yard.  Emerson  (Trees  of  Massachusetts,  p.  65),  says  that  a  pine  of  this 
species,  near  Paris,  "  thirty  years  planted,  is  eighty  feet  high,  with  a  diameter 
of  three  feet."  He  also  states  that  ten  white  pines  planted  at  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  in  1809  or  1810,  exhibited,  in  the  winter  of  1841  and  1842, 
an  average  of  twenty  inches  diameter  at  the  ground,  the  two  largest 
measuring,  at  the  height  of  three  feet,  four  feet  eight  inches  in  circumfer 
ence  ;  and  he  mentions  another  pine  growing  in  a  rocky  swamp,  which, 
at  the  age  of  thirty-two  years,  "  gave  seven  feet  in  circumference  at  the 
but,  with  a  height  of  sixty-two  feet  six  inches."  This  latter  I  suppose  to 
be  a  seedling,  the  others  transplanted  trees,  which  might  have  been  some 
years  old  when  placed  where  they  finally  grew. 

The  following  case  came  under  my  own  observation:  In  1824,  a  pine 
tree,  so  small  that  a  young  lady,  with  the  help  of  a  lad,  took  it  up  from 
the  ground  and  carried  it  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  was  planted  near  a  house 
in  a  town  in  Vermont.  It  was  occasionally  watered,  but  received  no 
other  special  treatment.  I  measured  this  tree  in  1860,  and  found  it,  at 
four  feet  from  the  ground,  and  entirely  above  the  spread  of  the  roots,  two 
feet  and  four  inches  in  diameter.  It  could  not  have  been  more  than  three 
inches  through  when  transplanted,  and  must  have  increased  its  diameter 
twenty -fivo  inches  in  thirty-six  years. 


Pine 

G 

Diameter, 
feet 

Maple 

.  .      5 

"     9  inches   "] 

Buttonwood, 

Elm, 

.  .  5 
.  .  5 

"     6       " 

a 

Hemlock,  .  . 

.  .  4 

"     9       " 

Oak,  

.  .  4 

a 

Basswood,    . 
Ash 

.  .  4 
.  4 

a 
it 

Birch.  . 

.  4 

« 

AMERICAN   FOREST   TREES.  275 

their  particular  species,  but  the  greatest  which  are  to  be  found 
ill  most  of  our  towns." 

Height. 

247  feet. 


From  100  to  200  feet. 


He  adds  a  note  saying  that  a  white  pine  was  cut  in  Dun- 
stable,  New  Hampshire,  in  the  year  1736,  the  diameter  of 
which  was  seven  feet  and  eight  inches.  Dr.  D  wight  says  that 
a  fallen  pine  in  Connecticut  was  found  to  measure  two  hun 
dred  and  forty-seven  feet  in  height,  and  adds  :  "  A  few  years 
since,  such  trees  were  in  great  numbers  along  the  northern 
parts  of  Connecticut  River."  In  another  letter,  he  speaks  of 
the  white  pine  as  "  frequently  six  feet  in  diameter,  and  two 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  height,"  and  states  that  a  pine  had 
been  cut  in  Lancaster,  New  Hampshire,  which  measured  two 
hundred  and  sixty-four  feet.  Emerson  wrote  in  1846  :  "  Fifty 
years  ago,  several  trees  growing  on  rather  dry  land  in  Bland- 
ford,  Massachusetts,  measured,  after  they  were  felled,  two 
hundred  and  twenty-three  feet.  All  these  trees  are  surpassed 
by  a  pine  felled  at  Hanover,  New  Hampshire,  about  a  hundred 
years  ago,  and  described  as  measuring  two  hundred  and  sev 
enty-four  feet.*  * 

These  descriptions,  it  will  be  noticed,  apply  to  trees  cut 
from  sixty  to  one  hundred  years  since.  Persons,  whom  ob 
servation  has  rendered  familiar  with  the  present  character  of 
the  American  forest,  will  be  struck  with  the  smallness  of  the 
diameter  which  Dr.  Williams  and  Dr.  Dwight  ascribe  to  trees 

*  WILLIAMS,  History  of  Vermont,  ii,  p.  53.  DWIGHT'S  Travels,  iv,  p.  21, 
and  iii,  p.  36.  EMEESON,  Trees  of  Massachusetts,  p.  61.  PAEISH,  Life  of 
President  Whcelock,  p.  56. 


276  AMERICAN   FOREST   TREES. 

of  siicli  extraordinary  height.  Individuals  of  the  several  spe 
cies  mentioned  in  Dr.  Williams's  table,  are  now  hardly  to  be 
found  in  the  same  climate,  exceeding  one  half  or  at  most  two 
thirds  of  the  height  which  he  assigns  to  them  ;  but,  except  in 
the  case  of  the  oak  and  the  pine,  the  diameter  stated  by  him 
would  not  be  thought  very  extraordinary  in  trees  of  far  less 
height,  now  standing.  Even  in  the  species  I  have  excepted, 
those  diameters,  with  half  the  heights  of  Dr.  Williams,  might 
perhaps  be  paralleled  at  the  present  time  ;  and  many  elms, 
transplanted,  at  a  diameter  of  six  inches,  within  the  memory 
of  persons  still  living,  measure  six,  and  sometimes  even  seven 
feet  through.  For  this  change  in  the  growth  of  forest  trees 
there  are  two  reasons :  the  one  is,  that  the  great  commercial 
value  of  the  pine  and  the  oak  have  caused  the  destruction  of 
all  the  best — that  is,  the  tallest  and  straightest — specimens  of 
both  ;  the  other,  that  the  thinning  of  the  woods  by  the  axe  of 
the  lumberman  has  allowed  the  access  of  light  and  heat  and 
air  to  trees  of  humbler  worth  and  lower  stature,  which  have 
survived  their  more  towering  brethren.  These,  consequently, 
have  been  able  to  expand  their  crowns  and  swell  their  stems 
to  a  degree  not  possible  so  long  as  they  were  overshadowed 
and  stifled  by  the  lordly  oak  and  pine.  While,  therefore,  the 
New  England  forester  must  search  long  before  he  finds  a  pine 

fit  to  be  the  mast 
Of  some  great  ammiral, 

beeches  and  elms  and  birches,  as  sturdy  as  the  mightiest  of 
their  progenitors,  are  still  no  rarity.'* 

*  The  forest  trees  of  the  Northern  States  do  not  attain  to  extreme  lon 
gevity  in  the  dense  woods.  Dr.  Williams  found  that  none  of  the  huge 
pines,  the  age  of  which  he  ascertained,  exceeded  three  hundred  and  fifty 
or  four  hundred  years,  though  he  quotes  a  friend  who  thought  he  had 
noticed  trees  considerably  older.  The  oak  lives  longer  than  the  pine,  and 
the  hemlock  spruce  is  perhaps  equally  long  lived.  A  tree  of  this  latter 
species,  cut  within  my  knowledge  in  a  thick  wood,  counted  four  hundred  and 
eighty-six,  or,  according  to  another  observer,  five  hundred  annual  circles. 

Great  luxuriance  of  animal  and  vegetable  production  is  not  commonly 
accompanied  by  long  duration  of  the  individual.  The  oldest  men  are  not 


FLOATING    OF    TIMBER.  277 

Another  evil,  sometimes  of  serious  magnitude,  wliich  at 
tends  the  operations  of  the  lumberman,  is  the  injury  to  the 
banks  of  rivers  from  the  practice  of  floating.  I  do  not  here 
allude  to  rafts,  which,  being  under  the  control  of  those  who 
navigate  them,  may  be  so  guided  as  to  avoid  damage  to  the 
shore,  but  to  masts,  logs,  and  other  pieces  of  timber  singly 
intrusted  to  the  streams,  to  be  conveyed  by  their  currents  to 
sawmill  ponds,  or  to  convenient  places  for  collecting  them 
into  rafts.  The  lumbermen  usually  haul  the  timber  to  the 
banks  of  the  rivers  in  the  winter,  and  when  the  spring  floods 
swell  the  streams  and  break  up  the  ice,  they  roll  the  logs  into 
the  water,  leaving  them  to  float  down  to  their  destination.  If 
the  transporting  stream  is  too  small  to  furnish  a  sufficient  chan 
nel  for  this  rude  navigation,  it  is  sometimes  dammed  up,  and 
the  timber  collected  in  the  pond  thus  formed  above  the  dam. 
"When  the  pond  is  full,  a  sluice  is  opened,  or  the  dam  is  blown 
up  or  otherwise  suddenly  broken,  and  the  whole  mass  of  lum 
ber  above  it  is  hurried  down  with  the  rolling  flood.  Both  of 
these  modes  of  proceeding  expose  the  banks  of  the  rivers 
employed  as  channels  of  flotation  to  abrasion,"*  and  in  some  of 

found  in  the  crowded  city ;  and  in  the  tropics,  where  life  is  prolific  and 
precocious,  it  is  also  short.  The  most  ancient  forest  trees  of  which  we 
have  accounts  have  not  been  those  growing  in  thick  woods,  but  isolated 
specimens,  with  no  taller  neighbor  to  intercept  the  light  and  heat  and  air, 
and  no  rival  to  share  the  nutriment  afforded  by  the  soil. 

The  more  rapid  growth  and  greater  dimensions  of  trees  standing  near 
the  boundary  of  the  forest,  are  matters  of  familiar  observation.  "  Long 
experience  has  shown  that  trees  growing  on  the  confines  of  the  wood  may 
be  cut  at  sixty  years  of  age  as  advantageously  as  others  of  the  same 
species,  reared  in  the  depth  of  the  forest,  at  a  hundred  and  twenty.  We 
have  often  remarked,  in  our  Alps,  that  the  trunk  of  trees  upon  the  border 
of  a  grove  is  most  developed  or  enlarged  upon  the  outer  or  open  side, 
where  the  branches  extend  themselves  farthest,  while  the  concentric 
circles  of  growth  are  most  uniform  in  those  entirely  surrounded  by  other 
trees,  or  standing  entirely  alone." — A.  and  G.  VILLA,  Necessita  dei  Boschi, 
pp.  17,  18. 

*  Caimi  states  that  "  a  single  flotation  in  the  Valtelline  in  1839,  caused 
damages  alleged  to  amount  to  more  than  $800,000,  and  actually  appraised 
at  $250,000." — Cenni  sulla  Imp&rtanza  e  Coltura  dci  Boschi,  p.  65. 


278  CAUSES    OF   THE   DESTRUCTION   OF   THE    FOREST. 

the  American  States  it  has  been  found  necessary  to  protect,  by 
special  legislation,  the  lands  through  which  they  flow  from  the 
serious  injury  sometimes  received  through  the  practices  I  have 
described.* 

Special  Causes  of  the  Destruction  of  European  Woods. 

The  causes  of  forest  waste  thus  far  enumerated  are  more 
or  less  common  to  both  continents ;  but  in  Europe  extensive 
woods  have,  at  different  periods,  been  deliberately  destroyed 

*  Most  physicists  who  have  investigated  the  laws  of  natural  hydraulics 
maintain  that,  in  consequence  of  direct  obstruction  and  frictional  resistance 
to  the  flow  of  the  water  of  rivers  along  their  banks,  there  is  both  an  in 
creased  rapidity  of  current  and  an  elevation  of  the  water  in  the  middle  of 
the  channel,  so  that  a  river  presents  always  a  convex  surface.  The  lum 
bermen  deny  this.  They  affirm  that,  while  rivers  are  rising,  the  water  is 
highest  in  the  middle  of  the  channel,  and  tends  to  throw  floating  objects 
shoreward ;  while  they  are  falling,  it  is  lowest  in  the  middle,  and  floating 
objects  incline  toward  the  centre.  Logs,  they  say,  rolled  into  the  water 
during  the  rise,  are  very  apt  to  lodge  on  the  banks,  while  those  set  afloat 
during  the  falling  of  the  waters  keep  in  the  current,  and  are  carried 
without  hindrance  to  their  destination. 

Foresters  and  lumbermen,  like  sailors  and  other  persons  whose  daily 
occupations  bring  them  into  contact,  and  often  into  conflict,  with  great 
natural  forces,  have  many  peculiar  opinions,  not  to  say  superstitions.  In 
one  of  these  categories  we  must  rank  the  universal  belief  of  lumbermen, 
that  with  a  given  head  of  water,  and  in  a  given  number  of  hours,  a  saw 
mill  cuts  more  lumber  by  night  than  by  day.  Having  been  personally 
interested  in  several  sawmills,  I  have  frequently  conversed  with  sawyers 
on  this  subject,  and  have  always  been  assured  by  them  that  their  uniform 
experience  established  the  fact  that,  other  things  being  equal,  the  action 
of  the  machinery  of  sawmills  is  more  rapid  by  night  than  by  day.  I  am 
sorry — perhaps  I  ought  to  be  ashamed — to  say  that  my  scepticism  has 
been  too  strong  to  allow  me  to  avail  myself  of  my  opportunities  of  testing 
this  question  by  pa=sing  a  night,  watch  in  hand,  counting  the  strokes  of  a 
millsavr.  More  unprejudiced,  and  I  must  add,  very  intelligent  and  credi 
ble  persons  have  informed  me  that  they  have  done  so,  and  found  the 
report  of  the  sawyers  abundantly  confirmed.  A  land  surveyor,  who  was 
also  an  experienced  lumberman,  sawyer,  and  machinist,  a  good  mathemati 
cian  and  an  exact  observer,  has  repeatedly  told  me,  that  he  had  very  often 
"  timed"  sawmills,  and  found  the  difference  in  favor  of  night  work  above 
thirty  per  cent.  Scd 


CAUSES    OF   THE   DESTRUCTION   OF   THE   FOREST.  279 

by  fire  or  the  axe,  because  they  afforded  a  retreat  to  enemies, 
Bobbers,  and  outlaws,  and  this  practice  is  said  to  have  been 
resorted  to  in  the  Mediterranean  provinces  of  France  as  re 
cently  as  the  time  of  Napoleon  L*  The  severe  and  even  san 
guinary  legislation,  by  which  some  of  the  governments  of 
mediaeval  Europe,  as  well  as  of  earlier  ages,  protected  the 
woods,  was  dictated  by  a  love  of  the  chase,  or  the  fear  of  a 
scarcity  of  fuel  and  timber.  The  laws  of  almost  every  Euro 
pean  state  more  or  less  adequately  secure  the  permanence  of 
the  forest ;  and  I  believe  Spain  is  the  only  European  land 
which  has  not  made  some  public  provision  for  the  protection 
and  restoration  of  the  woods — the  only  country  whose  people 
systematically  war  upon  the  garden  of  God.f 

*  For  many  instances  of  this  sort,  see  BECQUEEEL,  Des  Climats,  etc.,  pp. 
301-303.  In  1664,  the  Swedes  made  an  incursion  into  Jutland  and  felled  a 
considerable  extent  of  forest.  After  they  retired,  a  survey  of  the  damage  was 
had,  and  the  report  is  still  extant.  The  number  of  trees  cut  was  found  to 
be  120,000,  and  as  an  account  was  kept  of  the  numbers  of  each  species  of 
tree,  the  document  is  of  interest  in  the  history  of  the  forest,  as  showing 
the  relative  proportions  between  the  different  trees  which  composed  the 
wood.  See  VAUPELL.  JBogens  Indvandring,  p.  35,  and  Notes,  p.  55. 

t  Since  writing  this  paragraph,  I  have  fallen  upon — and  that  in  a  Span 
ish  author — one  of  those  odd  coincidences  of  thought  which  every  man 
of  miscellaneous  reading  so  often  meets  with.  Antonio  Ponz  (Viage  de 
EspaTia,  i,  prologo,  p.  Ixiii),  Fays :  "  Xor  would  this  be  so  great  an  evil, 
were  not  some  of  them  declaimers  against  trees,  thereby  proclaiming  them 
selves,  in  some  sort,  enemies  of  the  works  of  God,  who  gave  us  the  leafy 
abode  of  Paradise  to  dwell  in,  where  we  should  be  even  now  sojourning, 
but  for  the  first  sin,  which  expelled  us  from  it." 

I  do  not  know  at  what  period  the  two  Cast-lies  were  bared  of  their 
woods,  but  the  Spaniard's  proverbial  "  hatred  of  a  tree  "  is  of  long  stand 
ing.  Herrera  vigorously  combats  this  foolish  prejudice  ;  and  Ponz,  in  the 
prologue  to  the  ninth  volume  of  his  journey,  says  that  many  carried  it  so 
far  as  wantonly  to  destroy  the  shade  and  ornamental  trees  planted  by  the 
municipal  authorities.  "  Trees,"  they  contended,  and  still  believe,  "  breed 
birds,  and  birds  eat  up  the  grain."  Our  author  argues  against  the  suppo 
sition  of  the  "  breeding  of  birds  by  trees,"  which,  he  says,  is  as  absurd  as 
to  believe  that  an  elm  tree  can  yield  pears  ;  and  he  charitably  suggests  that 
the  expression  is,  perhaps,  a  mani&re  de  dire,  a  popular  phrase,  signifying 
simply  that  trees  harbor  birds. 


280  EOYAL    FORESTS. 

Royal  Forests  and  Game  Laws. 

The  French  authors  I  have  quoted,  as  well  as  many  other 
writers  of  the  same  nation,  refer  to  the  French  Revolution  as 
having  given  a  new  impulse  to  destructive  causes  which  were 
already  threatening  the  total  extermination  of  the  woods.* 
The  general  crusade  against  the  forests,  which  accompanied 
that  important  event,  is  to  be  ascribed,  in  a  considerable  de 
gree,  to  political  resentments.  The  forest  codes  of  the  me 
diaeval  kings,  and  the  local  "  continues  "  of  feudalism  contained 
many  severe  and  even  inhuman  provisions,  adopted  rather  for 
the  preservation  of  game  than  from  any  enlightened  views  of 
the  more  important  functions  of  the  woods.  Ordericus  Yitalis 
informs  us  that  William  the  Conqueror  destroyed  sixty  par 
ishes,  and  drove  out  their  inhabitants,  in  order  that  he  might 
turn  their  lands  into  a  forest,f  to  be  reserved  as  a  hunting 
ground  for  himself  and  his  posterity,  and  he  punished  with 
death  the  killing  of  a  deer,  wild  boar,  or  even  a  hare.  His 
successor,  William  Rufus,  according  to  the  Histoire  dcs  Dues 
de  Normandie  et  des  JRoi#  d1  Angltterre,  p.  67,  "  was  hunting 
one  day  in  a  new  forest,  which  he  had  caused  to  be  made  out 
of  eighteen  parishes  that  he  had  destroyed,  when,  by  mis- 

*  Keligious  intolerance  had  produced  similar  effects  in  France  at  an 
earlier  period.  "  The  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes  and  the  dragon- 
nades  occasioned  the  sale  of  the  forests  of  the  unhappy  Protestants,  who 
fled  to  seek  in  foreign  lands  the  liberty  of  conscience  which  was  refused 
to  them  in  France.  The  forests  were  soon  felled  hy  the  purchasers,  and 
the  soil  in  part  brought  under  cultivation." — BECQUEREL,  Des  Climats,  etc., 
p.  303. 

t  The  American  reader  must  be  reminded  that,  in  the  language  of  the 
chase  and  of  the  English  law,  a  "  forest"  is  not  necessarily  a  wood.  Any 
large  extent  of  ground,  withdrawn  from  cultivation,  reserved  for  the 
pleasures  of  the  chase,  and  allowed  to  clothe  itself  with  a  spontaneous 
growth,  serving  as  what  is  technically  called  "  cover  "  for  wild  animals, 
is,  in  the  dialects  I  have  mentioned,  a  forest.  When,  therefore,  the 
Norman  kings  afforested  the  grounds  referred  to  in  the  text,  it  is  not 
to  be  supposed  that  they  planted  them  with  trees,  though  the  protection 
afforded  to  them  by  the  game  laws  would,  if  cattle  had  been  kept  out, 
Boon  have  converted  them  into  real  woods. 


GAME   LAWS.  281 

chance,  he  was  killed  by  an  arrow  wherewith  Tyreus  de  Rois 
[Sir  "Walter  Tyrell]  thought  to  slay  a  beast,  but  missed  the 
beast,  and  slew  the  king,  who  was  beyond  it.  And  in  this 
very  same  forest,  his  brother  Richard  ran  so  hard  against  a 
tree  that  he  died  of  it.  And  men  commonly  said  that  these 
things  were  because  they  had  so  laid  waste  and  taken  the  said 
parishes." 

These  barbarous  acts,  as  Bonnemere  observes,""  were  simply 
the  transfer  of  the  customs  of  the  French  kings,  of  their  vassals, 
and  even  of  inferior  gentlemen,  to  conquered  England.  "  The 
death  of  a  hare,"  says  our  author,  "  was  a  hanging  matter,  the 
murder  of  a  plover  a  capital  crime.  Death  was  inflicted  on 
those  who  spread  nets  for  pigeons  ;  wretches  who  had  drawn  a 
bow  upon  a  stag  were  to  be  tied  to  the  animal  alive ;  and 
among  the  seigniors  it  was  a  standing  excuse  for  having  killed 
game  on  forbidden  ground,  that  they  aimed  at  a  serf."  The 
feudal  lords  enforced  these  codes  with  unrelenting  rigor,  and 
not  unfrequently  took  the  law  into  their  own  hands.  In  the 
time  of  Louis  IX,  according  to  William  of  Nangis,  "  three 
noble  children,  born  in  Flanders,  who  were  sojourning  at  the 
abbey  of  St.  Nicholas  in  the  Wood,  to  learn  the  speech  of 
France,  went  out  into  the  forest  of  the  abbey,  with  their  bows 
and  iron-headed  arrows,  to  disport  them  in  shooting  hares, 
chased  the  game,  which  they  had  started  in  the  wood  of  the 
abbey,  into  the  forest  of  Enguerrand,  lord  of  Coucy,  and  were 
taken  by  the  sergeants  which  kept  the  wood.  When  the  fell 
and  pitiless  Sir  Enguerrand  knew  this,  he  had  the  children 
straightway  hanged  without  any  manner  of  trial."  f  The 


*  Jlistoire  dcs  Paysans,  ii,  p.  190.  The  work  of  Bonnemere  is  of  great 
value  to  those  who  study  the  history  of  mediaeval  Europe  from  a  desire  to 
know  its  real  character,  and  not  in  the  hope  of  finding  apparent  facts  to 
sustain  a  false  and  dangerous  theory.  Bonnemere  is  one  of  the  few  writers 
who,  like  Michelet,  have  been  honest  enough  and  bold  enough  to  speak 
the  truth  with  regard  to  the  relations  between  the  church  and  the  people 
in  the  Middle  Ages. 

t  It  is  painful  to  add  that  a  similar  outrage  was  perpetrated  a  very  few 
years  ago,  in  one  of  the  European  states,  by  a  prince  of  a  family  now  de- 


282  GAME   LAWS. 

matter  being  brought  to  the  notice  of  good  King  Louis,  Sir 
Enguerrand  was  summoned  to  appear,  and,  finally,  after  many 
feudal  shifts  and  dilatory  pleas,  brought  to  trial  before  Louis 
himself  and  a  special  council.  Notwithstanding  the  opposition 
of  the  other  seigniors,  who,  it  is  needless  to  say,  spared  no 
efforts  to  save  a  peer,  probably  not  a  greater  criminal  than 
themselves,  the  king  was  much  inclined  to  inflict  the  punish 
ment  of  death  on  the  proud  baron.  "  If  he  believed,"  said  he, 
"  that  our  Lord  would  be  as  well  content  with  hanging  as  with 
pardoning,  he  would  hang  Sir  Enguerrand  in  spite  of  all  his 
barons ; "  but  noble  and  clerical  interests  unfortunately  pre 
vailed.  The  king  was  persuaded  to  inflict  a  milder  retribu 
tion,  and  the  murderer  was  condemned  to  pay  ten  thousand 
livres  in  coin,  and  to  "  build  for  the  souls  of  the  three  children 
two  chapels  wherein  mass  should  be  said  every  day."  *  The 
hope  of  shortening  the  purgatorial  term  of  the  young  persons, 
by  the  religious  rites  to  be  celebrated  in  the  chapels,  was 
doubtless  the  consideration  which,  operated  most  powerfully 
on  the  mind  of  the  king  ;  and  Europe  lost  a  great  example  for 
the  sake  of  a  mass. 

The  desolation  and  depopulation,  resulting  from  the  exten- 

throned.  In  this  case,  however,  the  prince  killed  the  trespasser  with  his 
own  hand,  his  sergeants  refusing  to  execute  his  mandate. 

*  GUILLAUME  DE  NANGis,  as  quoted  in  the  notes  to  JOINTILLE,  Nometto 
Collection  des  Memoires,  etc.,  par  Michaud  et  Poujoulat,  premiere  serie,  i, 
p.  335. 

Persons  acquainted  with  the  character  and  influence  of  the  mediaeval 
clergy  will  hardly  need  to  be  informed  that  the  ten  thousand  livres  never 
found  their  way  to  the  royal  exchequer.  It  was  easy  to  prove  to  the 
simple-minded  king  that,  as  the  profits  of  sin  were  a  monopoly  of  the 
church,  he  ought  not  to  derive  advantage  from  the  commission  of  a  crime 
by  one  of  his  subjects ;  and  the  priests  were  cunning  enough  both  to  secure 
to  themselves  the  amount  of  the  fine,  and  to  extort  from  Louis  large  ad 
ditional  grants  to  carry  out  the  purposes  to  which  they  devoted  the  money. 
"  And  though  the  king  did  take  the  moneys,"  says  the  chronicler,  "  he  put 
them  not  into  his  treasury,  but  turned  them  into  good  works;  for  he 
builded  therewith  the  maison-Dieu  of  Pontoise,  and  endowed  the  same 
with  rents  and  lands ;  also  the  schools  and  the  dormitory  of  the  friars 
preachers  of  Paris,  and  the  monastery  of  the  Minorite  friars." 


GAME   LAWS.  283 

sion  of  the  forest  and  the  enforcement  of  the  game  laws, 
induced  several  of  the  French  kings  to  consent  to  some  relaxa 
tion  of  the  severity  of  these  latter.  Francis  I,  however,  re 
vived  their  barbarous  provisions,  and,  according  to  Bonne- 
mere,  even  so  good  a  monarch  as  Henry  IV  reenacted  them, 
and  "  signed  the  sentence  of  death  upon  peasants  guilty  of 
having  defended  their  fields  against  devastation  by  wild 
beasts."  "  A  fine  of  twenty  livres,"  he  continues,  "  was  im 
posed  on  every  one  shooting  at  pigeons,  which,  at  that  time, 
swooped  down  by  thousands  upon  the  new-sown  fields  and 
devoured  the  seed.  But  let  us  count  even  this  a  progress,  for 
we  have  seen  that  the  murder  of  a  pigeon  had  been  a  capital 
crime."  * 

"Not  only  were  the  slightest  trespasses  on  the  forest  domain 
— the  cutting  of  an  oxgoad,  for  instance — severely  punished, 
but  game  animals  were  still  sacred  when  they  had  wandered 
from  their  native  precincts  and  were  ravaging  the  fields  of  the 
peasantry.  A  herd  of  deer  or  of  wild  boars  often  consumed 
or  trod  down  a  harvest  of  grain,  the  sole  hope  of  the  year  for 
a  whole  family ;  and  the  simple  driving  out  of  such  animals 
from  this  costly  pasturage  brought  dire  vengeance  on  the  head 
of  the  rustic,  who  had  endeavored  to  save  his  children's  bread 
from  their  voracity.  "  At  all  times,"  says  Paul  Louis  Courier, 
speaking  in  the  name  of  the  peasants  of  Chambord,  in  the 
"  Simple  Discours,"  "  the  game  has  made  war  upon  us.  Paris 
was  blockaded  eight  hundred  years  by  the  deer,  and  its  envi 
rons,  now  so  rich,  so  fertile,  did  not  yield  bread  enough  to 
support  the  gamekeepers."  f 

In  the  popular  mind,  the  forest  was  associated  with  all  the 

*  Eisioire  des  Paysans,  ii,  p.  200. 

t  The  following  details  from  Bonnem^re  will  serve  to  give  a  more  com 
plete  idea  of  the  vexatious  and  irritating  nature  of  the  game  laws  of  France. 
The  officers  of  the  chase  went  so  far  as  to  forbid  the  pulling  up  of  thistles 
and  weeds,  or  the  mo  wing. of  any  unenclosed  ground  before  St.  John's  day 
[24th  June],  in  order  that  the  nests  of  game  birds  might  not  be  disturbed. 
It  was  unlawful  to  fence -in  any  grounds  in  the  plains  where  royal  resi 
dences  were  situated ;  thorns  were  ordered  to  be  planted  in  all  fields  of 


284:  EFFECTS    OF   THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION. 

abuses  of  feudalism,  and  the  evils  the  peasantry  had  suffered 
from  the  legislation  which  protected  both  it  and  the  game  it 
sheltered,  blinded  them  to  the  still  greater  physical  mischiefs 
which  its  destruction  was  to  entail  upon  them.  No  longer 
protected  by  law,  the  crown  forests  and  those  of  the  great 
lords  were  attacked  with  relentless  fury,  unscrupulously  plun 
dered  and  wantonly  laid  waste,  and  even  the  rights  of  prop 
erty  in  small  private  woods  were  no  longer  respected.* 
Various  absurd  theories,  some  of  which  are  not  even  yet 
exploded,  were  propagated  with  regard  to  the  economical 
advantages  of  converting  the  forest  into  pasture  and  plough- 
wheat,  barley,  or  oats,  to  prevent  the  use  of  ground  nets  for  catching  the 
birds  which  consumed,  or  were  believed  to  consume,  the  grain,  and  it  was 
forbidden  to  cut  or  pull  stubble  before  the  first  of  October,  lest  the  part 
ridge  and  the  quail  might  be  deprived  of  their  cover.  For  destroying  the 
eggs  of  the  quail,  a  fine  of  one  hundred  livres  was  imposed  for  the  first 
offence,  double  that  amount  for  the  second,  and  for  the  third  the  culprit 
was  flogged  and  banished  for  five  years  to  a  distance  of  six  leagues  from 
the  forest. — Histoire  des  Paysans,  ii,  p.  202,  text  and  notes. 

Neither  these  severe  penalties,  nor  any  provisions  devised  by  the  inge 
nuity  of  modern  legislation,  have  been  able  effectually  to  repress  poaching. 
"The  game  laws,"  says  Clave,  "have  not  delivered  us  from  the  poachers, 
who  kill  twenty  times  as  much  game  as  the  sportsmen.  In  the  forest  of 
Fontainebleau,  as  in  all  those  belonging  to  the  state,  poaching  is  a  very 
common  and  a  very  profitable  offence.  It  is  in  vain  that  the  gamekeepers 
are  on  the  alert  night  and  day,  they  cannot  prevent  it.  Those  who  follow 
the  trade  begin  by  carefully  studying  the  habits  of  the  game.  They  will 
lie  motionless  on  the  ground,  by  the  roadside  or  in  thickets,  for  whole 
d:sys,  watching  the  paths  most  frequented  by  the  animals,"  &c. — Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,  Mai,  1863,  p.  160. 

The  writer  adds  many  details  on  this  subject,  and  it  appears  that,  as 
there  are  "beggars  on  horseback"  in  South  America,  there  are  poachers 
in  carriages  in  France. 

*  "  Whole  trees  were  sacrificed  for  the  most  insignificant  purposes ;  the 
peasants  would  cut  down  two  firs  to  make  a  single  pair  of  wooden  shoes." 
— MICHELET,  as  quoted  by  CLAVE,  Etudes,  p.  24. 

A  similar  wastefulness  formerly  prevailed  in  Russia,  though  not  from 
the  same  cause.  In  St.  Pierre's  time,  the  planks  brought  to  St.  Petersburg 
were  not  sawn,  but  hewn  with  the  axe,  and  a  tree  furnished  but  a  single 
plank. 


SMALLER  FOBEST  PLANTS.  285 

land,  its  injurious  effects  upon  climate,  health,  facility  of 
internal  communication,  and  the  like.  Thus  resentful  memory 
of  the  wrongs  associated  with  the  forest,  popular  ignorance, 
and  the  cupidity  of  speculators  cunning  enough  to  turn  these 
circumstances  to  profitable  account,  combined  to  hasten  the 
sacrifice  of  the  remaining  woods,  and  a  waste  was  produced 
which  hundreds  of  years  and  millions  of  treasure  will  hardly 
repair. 

Small  Forest  Plants,  and  Vitality  of  Seed. 

Another  function  of  the  woods  to  which  I  have  barely 
alluded  deserves  a  fuller  notice  than  can  be  bestowed  upon  it 
in  a  treatise  the  scope  of  which  is  purely  economical.  The 
forest  is  the  native  habitat  of  a  large  number  of  humbler 
plants,  to  the  growth  and  perpetuation  of  which  its  shade,  its 
humidity,  and  its  vegetable  mould  appear  to  be  indispensable 
necessities.*  We  cannot  positively  say  that  the  felling  of  the 

*  "  A  hundred  and  fifty  paces  from  my  house  is  a  hill  of  drift  sand,  on 
which  stood  a  few  scattered  pines.  Pinus  sylvestris,  and  Sempervuum  tee- 
to  rum  in  abundance,  Statice  armeria,  Ammone  vernalis,  Dianthus  carthusi- 
anorum,  with  other  sand  plants,  were  growing  there.  I  planted  the  hill 
with  a  few  birches,  and  all  the  plants  I  have  mentioned  completely  disap 
peared,  though  there  were  many  naked  spots  of  sand  between  the  trees. 
It  should  be  added,  however,  that  the  hillock  is  more  thickly  wooded  than 
before.  *  *  *  It  seems  then  that  Scmpervivum  tectorum,  &c.,  will  not 
bear  the  neighborhood  of  the  birch,  though  growing  well  near  the  Finns 
syli'cstris.  I  have  found  the  large  red  variety  of  Agaricus  deliciosus  only 
among  the  roots  of  the  pine  ;  the  greenish-blue  Agaricus  deliciosus  among 
alder  roots,  but  not  near  any  other  tree.  Birds  have  their  partialities 
among  trees  and  shrubs.  The  Silvia  prefer  the  Pinus  Larix  to  other  trees. 
In  my  garden  this  Pinus  is  never  without  them,  but  I  never  saw  a  bird 
perch  on  Thuja  occidentalis  or  Juniperus  saMna,  although  the  thick  foliage 
of  these  latter  trees  affords  birds  a  better  shelter  than  the  loose  leafage  of 
other  trees.  Xot  even  a  wren  ever  finds  its  way  to  one  of  them.  Perhaps 
the  scent  of  the  Thuja  and  the  Juniperus  is  offensive  to  them.  I  have 
spoiled  one  of  my  meadows  by  cutting  away  the  bushes.  It  formerly  bore 
grass  four  feet  high,  because  many  umbelliferous  plants,  such  as  Heracleum 
spondylium,  Spirwa  ulmaria,  Laserpitium  latifolia,  &c.,  grew  in  it.  Under 
the  shelter  of  the  bushes  these  plants  ripened  and  bore  seed,  but  they  grad 
ually  disappeared  as  the  shrubs  were  extirpated,  and  the  grass  now  does 


286  SMALLER  FOKEST  PLANTS. 

woods  in  a  given  vegetable  province  would  involve  the  final 
extinction  of  the  smaller  plants  which  are  found  only  within 
their  precincts.     Some  of  these,  though  not  naturally  prop' 
gating  themselves  in  the  open  ground,  may  perhaps  germina 
and    grow   under    artificial   stimulation   and   protection,   and 
finally  become   hardy   enough   to   maintain   an  independent 
existence  in  very  different  circumstances  from  those  which  at 
present  seem  essential  to  their  life. 

not  grow  to  the  height  of  more  than  two  feet,  because  it  is  no  longer 
obliged  to  keep  pace  with  the  umbellifera  which  flourished  among  it."  See 
a  paper  by  J.  G.  BUTTXEK,  of  Kurland,  in  BEIIGJIATJS'  GeographucTies  Jalir- 
luch,  1852,  No.  4,  pp.  14,  15. 

These  facts  are  interesting  as  illustrating  the  multitude  of  often  obscure 
conditions  upon  which  the  life  or  vigorous  growth  of  smaller  organisms 
depends.  Particular  species  of  truffles  and  of  mushrooms  are  found  asso 
ciated  with  particular  trees,  without  being,  as  is  popularly  supposed,  para 
sites  deriving  their  nutriment  from  the  dying  or  dead  roots  of  those  trees. 
The  success  of  Rousseau^s  experiments  seem  decisive  on  this  point,  for  he 
obtains  larger  crops  of  truffles  from  ground  covered  with  young  seedling 
oaks  than  from  that  filled  with  roots  of  old  trees.  See  an  article  on  Mont 
Ventoux,  by  Charles  Martins,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  Avril,  1863, 
p.  626. 

It  ought  to  be  much  more  generally  known  than  it  is  that  most,  if  not- 
all  mushrooms,  even  of  the  species  reputed  poisonous,  may  be  rendered 
harmless  and  healthful  as  food  by  soaking  them  for  two  hours  in  acidulated 
or  salt  water.  The  water  requires  two  or  three  spoonfuls  of  vinegar  or 
two  spoonfuls  of  gray  salt  to  the  quart,  and  a  quart  of  water  is  enough  for 
a  pound  of  sliced  mushrooms.  After  thus  soaking,  they  are  well  washed 
in  fresh  water,  thrown  into  cold  water,  which  is  raised  to  the  boiling  point, 
and,  after  remaining  half  an  hour,  taken  out  and  again  washed.  Gerard, 
to  prove  that  "  crumpets  is  wholesome,"  ate  one  hundred  and  seventy-five 
pounds  of  the  most  poisonous  mushrooms  thus  prepared,  in  a  single  month, 
fed  his  family  ad  libitum  with  the  same,  and  finally  administered  them,  in 
heroic  doses,  to  the  members  of  a  committee  appointed  by  the  Council  of 
Health  of  the  city  of  Paris.  See  FIGUIER,  ISAnnee  Scientifique,  1862,  pp. 
353,  384.  See  Appendix,  No.  29. 

It  has  long  been  known  that  the  Russian  peasantry  eat,  with  impunity, 
mushrooms  of  species  everywhere  else  regarded  as  very  poisonous.  Is  it 
not  probable  that  the  secret  of  rendering  them  harmless — which  was 
known  to  Pliny,  though  since  forgotten  in  Italy — is  possessed  by  the 
rustic  Muscovites  ? 


VITALITY    OF    SEEDS.  287^- 

Besides  this,  although  the  accounts  of  the  growth  of  seeds, 
which  have  lain  for  ages  in  the  ashy  dry  ness  of  Egyptian  cata 
combs,  are  to  be  received  with  great  caution,  or,  more  proba 
bly,  to  be  rejected  altogether,  yet  their  vitality  seems  almost 
imperishable  while  they  remain  in  the  situations  in  which 
nature  deposits  them.  When  a  forest  old  enough  to  have 
witnessed  the  mysteries  of  the  Druids  is  felled,  trees  of  other 
species  spring  up  in  its  place  ;  and  when  they,  in  their  turn, 
fall  before  the  axe,  sometimes  even  as  soon  as  they  have 
spread  their  protecting  shade  over  the  surface,  the  germs 
which  their  predecessors  had  shed  years,  perhaps  centuries 
before,  sprout  up,  and  in  due  time,  if  not  choked  by  other 
•trees  belonging  to  a  later  stage  in  the  order  of  natural  succes 
sion,  restore  again  the  original  wood.  In  these  cases,  the 
seeds  of  the  new  crop  may  often  have  been  brought  by  the 
wind,  by  birds,  by  quadrupeds,  or  by  other  causes ;  but,  in 
many  instances,  this  explanation  is  not  probable. 

When  newly  cleared  ground  is  burnt  over  in  the  United 
States,  the  ashes  are  hardly  cold  before  they  are  covered  with 
a  crop  of  fire  weed,  a  tall  herbaceous  plant,  very  seldom  seen 
growing  under  other  circumstances,  and  often  not  to  be  found 
for  a  distance  of  many  miles  from  the  clearing.  Its  seeds, 
whether  the  fruit  of  an  ancient  vegetation  or  newly  sown  by 
winds  or  birds,  require  either  a  quickening  by  a  heat  which 
raises  to  a  certain  high  point  the  temperature  of  the  stratum 
where  they  lie  buried,  or  a  special  pabulum  furnished  only  by 
the  combustion  of  the  vegetable  remains  that  cover  the  ground 
in  the  woods.  Earth  brought  up  from  wells  or  other  excava 
tions  soon  produces  a  harvest  of  plants  often  very  unlike  those 
of  the  local  flora. 

Moritz  Wagner,  as  quoted  by  "Wittwer,*  remarks  in  his 
description  of  Mount  Ararat :  "  A  singular  phenomenon  to 
which  my  guide  drew  my  attention  is  the  appearance  of  sev 
eral  plants  on  the  earth-heaps  left  by  the  last  catastrophe  [an 
earthquake],  which  grow  nowhere  else  on  the  mountain,  and 

*  Phy*ikali*ch4  GcoyrapJiie,  p.  486. 


288  VITALITY    OF    SEEDS. 

had  never  been  observed  in  this  region  before.  The  seeds  of 
these  plants  were  probably  brought  by  birds,  and  found  in  the 
loose,  clayey  soil  remaining  from  the  streams  of  mud,  the  con 
ditions  of  growth  which  the  other  soil  of  the  mountain  refused 
them."  This  is  probable  enough,  but  it  is  hardly  less  so  that 
the  flowing  mud  brought  them  up  to  the  influence  of  air  and 
sun,  from  depths  where  a  previous  convulsion  had  buried  them 
ages  before.  Seeds  of  small  sylvan  plants,  too  deeply  buried 
by  successive  layers  of  forest  foliage  and  the  mould  resulting 
from,  its  decomposition  to  be  reached  by  the  plough  when  the 
trees  are  gone  and  the  ground  brought  under  cultivation,  may, 
if  a  wiser  posterity  replants  the  wood  which  sheltered  their 
parent  stems,  germinate  and  grow,  after  lying  for  generations 
in  a  state  of  suspended  animation. 

Darwin  says  :  "  In  Staffordshire,  on  the  estate  of  a  relation, 
where  I  had  ample  means  of  investigation,  there  was  a  large 
and  extremely  barren  heath,  which  had  never  been  touched  by 
the  hand  of  man,  but  several  hundred  acres  of  exactly  the 
same  nature  had  been  enclosed  twenty-five  years  previously 
and  planted  with  Scotch  fir.  The  change  in  the  native  vege 
tation  of  the  planted  part  of  the  heath  was  most  remarkable— 
more  than  is  generally  seen  in  passing  from  one  quite  different 
soil  to  another ;  not  only  the  proportional  numbers  of  the 
heath  plants  were  wholly  changed,  but  twelve  species  of  plants 
(not  counting  grasses  and  sedges)  flourished  in  the  plantation 
which  could  not  be  found  on  the  heath."  *  Had  the  author 
informed  us  that  these  twelve  plants  belonged  to  a  species  whose 
seeds  enter  into  the  nutriment  of  the  birds  which  appeared 
with  the  young  wood,  we  could  easily  account  for  their  pres 
ence  in  the  soil ;  but  he  says  distinctly  that  the  birds  were  of 
insectivorous  species,  and  it  therefore  seems  more  probable 
that  the  seeds  had  been  deposited  when  an  ancient  forest  pro 
tected  the  growth  of  the  plants  which  bore  them,  and  that 
they  sprang  up  to  new  life  when  a  return  of  favorable  con 
ditions  awaked  them  from  a  sleep  of  centuries.  Darwin 

*  Origin  of  Species,  American  edition,  p.  69. 


VITALITY   OP    SEEDS.  289 

indeed  says  that  the  heath  "  had  never  been  touched  by  the 
hand  of  man."  Perhaps  not,  after  it  became  a  heath ;  but 
what  evidence  is  there  to  control  the  general  presumption 
that  this  heath  was  preceded  by  a  forest,  in  whose  shade  the 
vegetables  which  dropped  the  seeds  in  question  might  have 
grown  ?  * 

Although,  therefore,  the  destruction  of  a  wood  and  the 
reclaiming  of  the  soil  to  agricultural  uses  suppose  the  death 
of  its  smaller  dependent  flora,  these  revolutions  do  not  exclude 
the  possibility  of  its  resurrection.  In  a  practical  view  of  the 
subject,  however,  we  must  admit  that  when  the  woodman  fells 
a  tree  he  sacrifices  the  colony  of  humbler  growths  which  had 

*  Writers  on  vegetable  physiology  record  numerous  instances  where 
seeds  have  grovrn  after  lying  dormant  for  ages.  The  following  cases,  men 
tioned  by  Dr.  D wight  (Travels,  ii,  pp.  438,  439),  may  be  new  to  many 
readers : 

"  The  lands  [in  Panton,  Vermont],  which  have  here  been  once  culti 
vated,  and  again  permitted  to  lie  waste  for  several  years,  yield  a  rich  and 
fine  growth  of  hickory  [Gary a  porcina].  Of  this  wood  there  is  not,  I  be 
lieve,  a  single  tree  in  any  original  forest  within  fifty  miles  from  this  spot. 
The  native  growth  was  here  white  pine,  of  which  I  did  not  see  a  single  stem 
in  a  whole  grove  of  hickory." 

The  hickory  is  a  walnut,  bearing  a  fruit  too  heavy  to  be  likely  to  be 
carried  fifty  miles  by  birds,  and  besides,  I  believe  it  is  not  eaten  by  any 
bird  indigenous  to  Vermont. 

"  A  field,  about  five  miles  from  Northampton,  on  an  eminence  called 
Rail  Hill,  was  cultivated  about  a  century  ago.  The  native  growth  here, 
and  in  all  the  surrounding  region,  was  wholly  oak,  chestnut,  &c.  As  the 
field  belonged  to  my  grandfather,  I  had  the  best  opportunity  of  learning 
its  history.  It  contained  about  five  acres,  in  the  form  of  an  irregular 
parallelogram.  As  the  savages  rendered  the  cultivation  dangerous,  it  was 
given  up.  On  this  ground  there  sprang  up  a  grove  of  white  pines  cover 
ing  the  field  and  retaining  its  figure  exactly.  So  far  as  I  remember,  there 
was  not  in  it  a  single  oak  or  chestnut  tree.  *  *  *  There  was  not  a  sin 
gle  pine  whose  seeds  were,  or,  probably,  had  for  ages  been,  sufficiently 
near  to  have  been  planted  on  this  spot.  The  fact  that  these  white  pinea 
covered  this  field  exactly,  so  as  to  preserve  both  its  extent  and  its  figure, 
and  that  there  were  none  in  the  neighborhood,  are  decisive  proofs  that  cul 
tivation  brought  up  the  seeds  of  a  former  forest  within  the  limits  of  vege 
tation,  and  gave  them  an  opportunity  to  germinate.1' 
19 


290  SMALL   FOREST   PLANTS. 

vegetated  under  its  protection.  Some  wood  plants  are  known 
to  possess  valuable  medicinal  properties,  and  experiment  may 
show  that  the  number  of  these  is  greater  than  we  now  suppose. 
Few  of  them,  however,  have  any  other  economical  value  than 
that  of  furnishing  a  slender  pasturage  to  cattle  allowed  to 
roam  in  the  woods ;  and  even  this  small  advantage  is  far 
more  than  compensated  by  the  mischief  done  to  the  young 
trees  by  browsing  animals.  Upon  the  whole,  the  importance 
of  this  class  of  vegetables,  as  physic  or  as  food,  is  not  such  as 
to  furnish  a  very  telling  popular  argument  for  the  conservation 
of  the  forest  as  a  necessary  means  of  their  perpetuation.  More 
potent  remedial  agents  may  supply  their  place  in  the  mater ia 
medico-,  and  an  acre  of  grass  land  yields  more  nutriment  for 
cattle  than  a  range  of  a  hundred  acres  of  forest.  But  he 
whose  sympathies  with  nature  have  taught  him  to  feel  that 
there  is  a  fellowship  between  all  God's  creatures  ;  to  love  the 
brilliant  ore  better  than  the  dull  ingot,  iodic  silver  and  crys 
tallized  red  copper  better  than  the  shillings  and  the  pennies 
forged  from  them  by  the  coiner's  cunning;  a  venerable  oak 
tree  than  the  brandy  cask  whose  staves  are  split  out  from  its 
heart  wood  ;  a  bed  of  anemones,  hepaticas,  or  wood  violets 
than  the  leeks  and  onions  wrhich  he  may  grow  on  the  soil  they 
have  enriched  and  in  the  air  they  made  fragrant — he  who  has 
enjoyed  that  special  training  of  the  heart  and  intellect  which 
can  be  acquired  only  in  the  unviolated  sanctuaries  of  nature, 
"  where  man  is  distant,  but  God  is  near " — will  not  rashly 
assert  his  right  to  extirpate  a  tribe  of  harmless  vegetables, 
barely  because  their  products  neither  tickle  his  palate  nor  fill 
his  pocket ;  and  his  regret  at  the  dwindling  area  of  the  forest 
solitude  will  be  augmented  by  the  reflection  that  the  nurse 
lings  of  the  woodland  perish  with  the  pines,  the  oaks,  and  the 
beeches  that  sheltered  them.* 

*  Quaint  old  Valvasor  had  observed  the  subduing  influence  of  nature's 
solitudes.  In  describing  the  lonely  Canker-Thai,  which,  though  rocky, 
was  in  his  time  well  wooded  with  "  fir,  larches,  beeches,  and  other  trees," 
lie  says :  "  Gladsoineness  and  beauty,  which  dwell  in  many  valleys,  may 
not  be  looked  for  there.  The  journey  through  it  is  cheerless,  melancholy, 


THE   LOCUST.  291 

Although,  as  I  have  said,  birds  do  not  frequent  the  deeper 
recesses  of  the  wood,*  yet  a  very  large  proportion  of  them 
build  their  nests  in  trees,  and  find  in  their  foliage  and 
branches  a  secure  retreat  from  the  inclemencies  of  the  seasons 
and  the  pursuit  of  the  reptiles  and  quadrupeds  which  prey 
upon  them.  The  borders  of  the  forests  are  vocal  with  song ;  j 
and  when  the  gray  morning  calls  the  creeping  things  of  the, 
earth  out  of  their  night  cells,  it  summons  from  the  neighboring 
wood  legions  of  their  winged  enemies,  which  swoop  down 
upon  the  fields  to  save  man's  harvests  by  devouring  the  de 
stroying  worm,  and  surprising  the  lagging  beetle  in  his  tardy 
retreat  to  the  dark  cover  where  he  lurks  through  the  hours  of 
daylight. 

The  insects  most  injurious  to  rural  industry  do  not  multi 
ply  in  or  near  the  woods.  The  locust,  which  ravages  the  East 
with  its  voracious  armies,  is  bred  in  vast  open  plains  which 
admit  the  full  heat  of  the  sun  to  hasten  the  hatching  of  the 
eggs,  gather  no  moisture  to  destroy  them,  and  harbor  no  bird 
to  feed  upon  the  larvae.f  It  is  only  since  the  felling  of  the 
forests  of  Asia  Minor  and  Gyrene  that  the  locust  has  become 
so  fearfully  destructive  in  those  countries ;  and  the  grasshop 
per,  which  now  threatens  to  be  almost  as  great  a  pest  to  the 
agriculture  of  some  North  American  soils,  breeds  in  seriously 

wearisome,  and  serveth  to  temper  and  mortify  over-joy ousness  of  thought. 
*  In  sum  it  is  a  very  wild,  wherein  the  wildness  of  human  pride 
doth  grow  tame." — Ehre  der  Grain,  i,  p.  136,  b. 

h  Valvasor  says,  in  the  same  paragraph  from  which  I  have  just  quoted, 
"  Tn  my  many  journeys  through  this  valley,  I  did  never  have  sight  of  so 
much  as  a  single  bird." 

t  Smela,  in  the  government  of  Kiew,  has,  for  some  }<e;ars,  not  suffered 
at  all  from  the  locusts,  which  formerly  came  every  year  in  vast  swarms, 
and  the  curculio,  so  injurious  to  the  turnip  crops,  is  less  destructive  there 
than  in  other  parts  of  the  province.  This  improvement  is  owing  partly  to 
the  more  thorough  cultivation  of  the  soil,  partly  to  the  groves  which  are 
interspersed  among  the  plough  lands.  *  *  *  When  in  the  midst  of  the 
plains  woods  shall  be  planted  and  filled  with  insectivorous  birds,  the  locusts 
will  ceaso  to  be  a  plague  and  a  terror  to  the  farmer. — RENTZSCH,  Der  Wald, 
pp.  45,  46. 


292  FORESTS   OF  EUROPE. 

injurious  numbers  only  where  a  wide  extent  of  surface  is  bare 
of  woods. 

Utility  of  the  Forest. 

In  most  parts  of  Europe,  the  woods  are  already  so  nearly 
extirpated  that  the  mere  protection  of  those  which  now  exist 
is  by  no  means  an  adequate  remedy  for  the  evils  resulting 
from  the  want  of  them  ;  and  besides,  as  I  have  already  said, 
abundant  experience  has  shown  that  no  legislation  can  secure 
the  permanence  of  the  forest  in  private  hands.  Enlightened 
individuals  in  most  European  states,  governments  in  others, 
have  made  very  extensive  plantations,*  and  France  has  now 
set  herself  energetically  at  work  to  restore  the  woods  in  the 
southern  provinces,  and  thereby  to  prevent  the  utter  depopu 
lation  and  waste  with  which  that  once  fertile  soil  and  delicious 
climate  are  threatened. 

The  objects  of  the  restoration  of  the  forest  are  as  multifari 
ous  as  the  motives  that  have  led  to  its  destruction,  and  as  the 
evils  which  that  destruction  has  occasioned.  It  is  hoped  that 
the  planting  of  the  mountains  will  diminish  the  frequency  and 
violence  of  river  inundations,  prevent  the  formation  of  tor 
rents,  mitigate  the  extremes  of  atmospheric  temperature, 
humidity,  and  precipitation,  restore  dried-up  springs,  rivulets, 
and  sources  of  irrigation,  shelter  the  fields  from  chilling  and 
from  parching  winds,  prevent  the  spread  of  miasmatic  effluvia, 

*  England  is,  I  believe,  the  only  country  where  private  enterprise  has 
pursued  sylviculture  on  a  really  great  scale,  though  admirable  examples 
have  been  set  in  many  others  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  In  England 
the  law  of  primogeniture,  and  other  institutions  and  national  customs 
which  tend  to  keep  large  estates  long  undivided  and  in  the  same  line  of 
inheritance,  the  wealth  of  the  landholders,  and  the  difficulty  of  finding  safe 
and  profitable  investments  of  capital,  combine  to  afford  encouragements 
for  the  plantation  of  forests,  which  nowhere  else  exist  in  the  same  degree. 
The  climate  of  Englanda  too,  is  very  favorable  to  the  growth  of  forest  trees, 
though  the  character  of  surface  secures  a  large  part  of  the  island  from  the 
evils  which  have  resulted  from  the  destruction  of  the  woods  elsewhere, 
and  therefore  their  restoration  is  a  matter  of  less  geographical  importance 
in  England  than  on  the  Continent. 


DEMAND   FOE   WOOD.  293 

and,  finally,  furnish  an  inexhaustible  and  self-renewing  supply 
of  a  material  indispensable  to  so  many  purposes  of  domestic 
comfort,  to  the  successful  exercise  of  every  art  of  peace,  every 
destructive  energy  of  war.* 

But  our  enumeration  of  the  uses  of  trees  is  not  yet  com 
plete.  Besides  the  influence  of  the  forest,  in  mountain  ranges, 
as  a  means  of  preventing  the  scooping  out  of  ravines  and  the 
accumulations  of  water  which  fill  them,  trees  subserve  a  valu 
able  purpose,  in  lower  positions,  as  barriers  against  the  spread 
of  floods  and  of  the  material  they  transport  with  them ;  but 
this  will  be  more  appropriately  considered  in  the  chapter  on 
the  waters ;  and  another  very  important  use  of  trees,  that  of 
fixing  movable  sand-dunes,  and  reclaiming  them  to  profitable 
cultivation,  will  be  pointed  out  in  the  chapter  on  the  sands. 

The  vast  extension  of  railroads,  of  manufactures  and  the 
mechanical  arts,  of  military  armaments,  and  especially  of  the 
commercial  fleets  and  navies  of  Christendom  within  the  pres 
ent  century,  has  greatly  augmented  the  demand  for  wood,f 

*  The  preservation  of  the  woods  on  the  eastern  frontier  of  France,  as 
a  kind  of  natural  abattis,  is  also  recognized  by  the  Government  of  that 
country  as  an  important  measure  of  military  defence,  though  there  have 
been  conflicting  opinions  on  the  subject. 

f  Let  us  take  the  supply  of  timber  for  railroad  ties.  According  to 
Clave  (p.  248),  France  has  9,000  kilometres  of  railway  in  operation,  7,000 
in  construction,  half  of  which  is  built  with  a  double  track.  Adding  turn 
outs  and  extra  tracks  at  stations,  the  number  of  ties  required  for  a  single 
track  is  stated  at  1,200  to  the  kilometre,  or,  as  Clave  computes,  for  the 
entire  network  of  France,  58,000,000.  As  the  schoolboys  say,  "this  sum 
does  not  prove;"  for  16,000  +  8,000  for  the  double  track  halfway  = 
24,000,  and  24,000  X  1,200  =  28,800,000.  According  to  Bigelow  (Les  Etats 
Unis  en  1863,  p.  439),  the  United  States  had  in  operation  or  construction 
on  the  first  of  January,  1862,  51,000  miles,  or  about  81,000  kilometres  of 
railroad,  and  the  military  operations  of  the  present  civil  war  are  rapidly 
extending  the  system.  Allowing  the  same  proportion  as  in  France,  the 
American  railroads  required  97,200,000  ties  in  1862.  The  consumption  of 
timber  in  Europe  and  America  during  the  present  generation,  occasioned 
by  this  demand,  has  required  the  sacrifice  of  many  hundred  thousand  acres 
of  forest,  and  if  we  add  the  quantity  employed  for  telegraph  posts,  we  have 
an  amount  of  destruction,  for  entirely  new  purposes,  which  is  really  appalling. 

The  consumption  of  wood  for  lucifer  matches  is  enormous,  and  I  have 


294:  DEMAND  FOE   WOOD. 

and,  but  for  improvements  in  metallurgy  which  have  facili 
tated  the  substitution  of  iron  for  that  material,  the  last  twenty- 
five  years  would  almost  have  stripped  Europe  of  her  only 

heard  of  several  instances  where  tracts  of  pine  forest,  hundreds  and  even 
thousands  of  acres  in  extent,  have  been  purchased  and  felled,  solely  to 
supply  timber  for  this  purpose. 

The  demand  for  wood  for  small  carvings  and  for  children's  toys  is  in 
credibly  large.     Kentzsch  states  the  export  of  such  objects  from  the  town 
of  Sonnebcrg  alone  to  have  amounted,  in  1853,  to  60,000  centner,  or  three 
thousand  tons'  weight. — Der  Wald,  p.  68.    See  Appendix,  No.  82. 

The  importance  of  so  managing  the  forest  that  it  may  continue  indefi 
nitely  to  furnish  an  adequate  supply  of  material  for  naval  architecture  is 
well  illustrated  by  some  remarks  of  the  same  author  in  the  valuable  little 
work  just  cited.  He  suggests  that  the  prosperity  of  modern  England  is 
due,  in  no  small  degree,  to  the  supplies  of  wood  and  other  material  for 
building  and  equipping  ships,  received  from  the  forests  of  her  colonies  and 
of  other  countries  with  which  she  has  maintained  close  commercial  rela 
tions,  and  he  adds :  "  Spain,  which  by  her  position  seemed  destined  for 
universal  power,  and  once,  in  fact,  possessed  it,  has  lost  her  political  rank, 
because  during  the  unwise  administration  of  the  successors  of  Philip  II, 
the  empty  exchequer  could  not  furnish  the  means  of  building  new  fleets ; 
for  the  destruction  of  the  forests  had  raised  the  price  of  timber  above  the 
resources  of  the  state." — Der  Wald,  p.  63. 

The  market  price  of  timber,  like  that  of  all  other  commodities,  may  be 
said,  in  a  general  way,  to  be  regulated  by  the  laws  of  demand  and  supply, 
but  it  is  also  controlled  by  those  seemingly  unrelated  accidents  which  so 
often  disappoint  the  calculations  of  political  economists  in  other  branches 
of  commerce.  A  curious  case  of  this  sort  is  noticed  by  CEEINI,  DeW 
Impianto  e  Conservazione  del  Boschi,  p.  IV:  "In  the  mountains  on  the 
Lago  Maggiore,  in  years  when  maize  is  cheap,  the  woodcutters  can  pro 
vide  themselves  with  corn  meal  enough  for  a  week  by  three  days'  labor, 
and  they  refuse  to  work  the  remaining  four.  Hence  the  dealers  in  wood, 
not  being  able  to  supply  the  demand,  for  want  of  laborers,  are  obliged  to 
raise  the  price  for  the  following  season,  both  for  timber  and  for  firewood ; 
so  that  a  low  price  of  grain  occasions  a  high  price  of  building  lumber  and 
of  fuel.  The  consequence  is,  that  though  the  poor  have  supplied  them 
selves  cheaply  with  food,  they  must  pay  dear  for  firewood,  and  they  can 
not  get  work,  because  the  high  price  of  lumber  has  discouraged  repairs 
and  building,  the  expense  of  which  landed  proprietors  cannot  undertake 
when  their  incomes  have  been  reduced  by  sales  of  grain  at  low  rates,  and 
hence  there  is  not  demand  enough  for  lumber  to  induce  the  timber  mer 
chants  to  furnish  employment  to  the  woodmen." 


DEMAND   FOR   WOOD.  295 

remaining  trees  fit  for  such,  uses.*    The  walnut  trees  alone 
felled  in  Europe  within  two  years  to  furnish  the  armies  of 

*  Besides  the  substitution  ol  iron  for  wood,  a  great  saving  of  consump 
tion  of  this  latter  material  has  been  effected  by  the  revival  of  ancient 
methods  of  increasing  its  durability,  and  the  invention  of  new  processes 
for  the  same  purpose.  The  most  effectual  preservative  yet  discovered  for 
wood  employed  on  land,  is  sulphate  of  copper,  a  solution  of  which  is 
introduced  into  the  pores  of  the  wood  while  green,  by  soaking,  by  forcing- 
pumps,  or,  most  economically,  by  the  simple  pressure  of  a  column  of  the 
fluid  in  a  small  pipe  connected  with  the  end  of  the  piece  of  timber  sub 
jected  to  the  treatment.  Clave  (Etudes  Forestieres,  pp.  240-249)  gives  an 
interesting  account  of  the  various  processes  employed  for  rendering  wood 
imperishable,  and  states  that  railroad  ties  injected  with  sulphate  of  copper 
in  1846,  were  found  absolutely  unaltered  in  1855  ;  and  telegraphic  posts 
prepared  two  years  earlier,  are  now  in  a  state  of  perfect  preservation. 

For  many  purposes,  the  method  of  injection  is  too  expensive,  and  some 
simpler  process  is  much  to  be  desired.  The  question  of  the  proper  time 
of  felling  timber  is  not  settled,  and  the  best  modes  of  air,  water,  and  steam 
seasoning  are  not  yet  fully  ascertained.  Experiments  on  these  subjects 
would  be  well  worth  the  patronage  of  governments  in  new  countries, 
where  they  can  be  very  easily  made,  without  the  necessity  of  much  waste 
of  valuable  material,  and  without  expensive  arrangements  for  observation. 

The  practice  of  stripping  living  trees  of  their  bark  some  years  before 
they  are  felled,  is  as  old  as  the  time  of  Yitruvius,  but  is  much  less  followed 
than  it  deserves,  partly  because  the  timber  of  trees  so  treated  inclines  to 
crack  and  split,  and  partly  because  it  becomes  so  hard  as  to  be  wrought 
with  considerable  difficulty. 

In  America,  economy  in  the  consumption  of  fuel  has  been  much  pro 
moted  by  the  substitution  of  coal  for  wood,  the  general  use  of  stoves  both 
for  wood  and  coal,  and  recently  by  the  employment  of  anthracite  in  the 
furnaces  of  stationary  and  locomotive  steam-engines.  All  the  objections 
to  the  use  of  anthracite  for  this  latter  purpose  appear  to  have  been  over 
come,  and  the  improvements  in  its  combustion  have  been  attended  with 
a  great  pecuniary  saving,  and  with  much  advantage  to  the  preservation  of 
the  woods. 

The  employment  of  coal  has  produced  a  great  reduction  in  the  con 
sumption  of  fire  wood  in  Paris.  In  1815,  the  supply  of  fire  wood  for  the 
city  required  1,200,000  steres,  or  cubic  metres ;  in  1859,  it  had  fallen  to 
501.805,  while,  in  the  mean  time,  the  consumption  of  coal  had  risen  from 
600,000  to  432,000,000  metrical  quintals.  See  CLAVE,  Etudes,  p.  212. 

I  think  there  must  be  some  error  in  this  last  sum,  as  432  millions 
of  metrical  quintals  would  amount  to  43  millions  of  tons,  a  quantity  which 


296  FORESTS   OF   FRANCE. 

America  with  gunstocks,  would  form  a  forest  of  no  incon 
siderable  extent.* 

The  Forests  of  Europe. 

Mirabeau  estimated  the  forests  of  France  in  1750  at  seven 
teen  millions  of  hectares  [42,000,000  acres]  ;  in  1860  they 
were  reduced  to  eight  millions  [19,769,000  acres].  This 
would  be  at  the  rate  of  82,000  hectares  [202,600  acres]  per 
year.  Troy,  from  whose  valuable  pamphlet,  Etude  sur  le 
Reboisement  des  Montagues,  I  take  these  statistical  details, 
supposes  that  Mirabeau's  statement  may  have  been  an  extrav 
agant  one,  but  it  still  remains  certain  that  the  waste  has  been 
enormous  ;  for  it  is  known  that,  in  some  departments,  that  of 
Ariege,  for  instance,  clearing  has  gone  on  during  the  last  half 
century  at  the  rate  of  three  thousand  acres  a  year,f  and  in  all 
parts  of  the  empire  trees  have  been  felled  faster  than  they 
have  grown.  The  total  area  of  France,  excluding  Savoy,  is 
about  one  hundred  and  thirty-one  millions  of  acres.  The 
extent  of  forest  supposed  by  Mirabeau  would  be  about  thirty- 
two  per  cent,  of  the  whole  territory 4  In  a  country  and  a 
climate  where  the  conservative  influences  of  the  forest  are  so 
necessary  as  in  France,  trees  must  cover  a  large  surface  and  be 

it  is  difficult  to  suppose  could  be  consumed  in  the  city  of  Paris.  The  price 
of  fire  wood  has  scarcely  advanced  at  all  in  Paris  for  half  a  century,  though 
that  of  timber  generally  has  risen  enormously. 

*  In  the  first  two  years  of  the  present  civil  war  in  the  United  States, 
twenty-eight  thousand  walnut  trees  were  felled  to  supply  a  single  European 
manufactory  of  guns:ocks  for  the  American  market. 

t  Among  the  indirect  proofs  of  the  comparatively  recent  existence  of 
extensive  forests  in  France,  may  be  mentioned  the  fact,  that  wolves  were 
abundant,  not  very  long  since,  in  parts  of  the  empire  where  there  are  now 
neither  wolves  nor  woods  to  shelter  them.  Arthur  Young  more  than  once 
speaks  of  the  "  innumerable  multitudes  "  of  these  animals  which  infested 
France  in  1789,  and  George  Sand  states,  in  the  Histoire  de  ma  Vie,  that 
some  years  after  the  restoration  of  the  Bourbons,  they  chased  travellers 
on  horseback  in  the  Southern  provinces,  and  literally  knocked  at  the  doors 
of  her  father-in-law's  country  seat. 

t  In  the  Eecepte  Veritable,  Palissy  having  expressed  his  indignation  at 
the  folly  of  men  in  destroying  the  woods,  his  interlocutor  defends  the 


FORESTS    OF   FRANCE.  297 

grouped  in  large  masses,  in  order  to  discharge  to  the  best  ad 
vantage  the  various  functions  assigned  to  them  by  nature. 
The  consumption  of  wood  is  rapidly  increasing  in  that  empire, 
and  a  large  part  of  its  territory  is  mountainous,  sterile,  and 
otherwise  such  in  character  or  situation  that  it  can  be  more 
profitably  devoted  to  the  growth  of  wood  than  to  any  agricul 
tural  use.  Hence  it  is  evident  that  the  proportion  of  forest 
in  1750,  taking  even  Mirabeau's  large  estimate,  was  not  very 
much  too  great  for  permanent  maintenance,  though  doubtless 
the  distribution  was  so  unequal  that  it  would  have  been  sound 
policy  to  fell  the  woods  and  clear  land  in  some  provinces, 
while  large  forests  should  have  been  planted  in  others.*  Du- 

policy  of  felling  them,  by  citing  the  example  of  "divers  bishops,  cardinals, 
priors,  abbots,  monkeries,  and  chapters,  which,  by  cutting  their  woods, 
have  made  three  profits,"  the  sale  of  the  timber,  the  rent  of  the  ground, 
and  the  "good  portion"  they  received  of  the  grain  grown  by  the  peasants 
upon  it.  To  this  argument,  Palissy  replies  :  "  I  cannot  enough  detest  this 
thing,  and  I  call  it  not  an  error,  but  a  curse  and  a  calamity  to  all  France ; 
for  when  forests  shall  be  cut,  all  arts  shall  cease,  and  they  which  practise 
them  shall  be  driven  out  to  eat  grass  with  Nebuchadnezzar  and  the  beasts 
of  the  field.  I  have  divers  times  thought  to  set  down  in  writing  the  arts 
which  shall  perish  when  there  shall  be  no  more  wood ;  but  when  I  had 
written  down  a  great  number,  I  did  perceive  that  there  could  be  no  end 
of  my  writing,  and  having  diligently  considered,  I  found  there  was  not 
any  which  could  be  followed  without  wood."  *  *  "And  truly  I  could 
well  allege  to  thee  a  thousand  reasons,  but  'tis  so  cheap  a  philosophy,  that 
the  very  chamber  wenches,  if  they  do  but  think,  may  see  that  without 
wood,  it  is  not  possible  to  exercise  any  manner  of  human  art  or  cunning." 
—  (Envrcs  de  BERNARD  PALISSY,  p.  89. 

*  Since  writing  the  above  paragraph,  I  have  found  the  view  I  have 
taken  of  this  point  confirmed  by  the  careful  investigations  of  Eentzsch, 
who  estimates  the  proper  proportion  of  woodland  to  entire  surface  at 
twenty-three  per  cent,  for  the  interior  of  Germany,  and  supposes  that  near 
the  coast,  where  the  air  is  supplied  with  humidity  by  evaporation  from 
the  sea,  it  might  safely  be  reduced  to  twenty  per  cent.  See  Rentzsch's 
very  valuable  prize  essay,  Der  Wald  im  Haushalt  der  Natur  und  der 
Volkswirtltscltaft,  cap.  viii. 

The  due  proportion  in  France  would  considerably  exceed  that  for  the 
German  States,  because  France  has  relatively  more  surface  unfit  for  any 
growth  but  that  of  wood,  because  the  form  and  geological  character  of  her 


298  FORESTS    OF    KUS8IA. 

ring  the  period  in  question,  France  neither  exported  manufac* 
tured  wood  or  rough  timber,  nor  derived  important  collateral 
advantages  of  any  sort  from  the  destruction  of  her  forests. 
She  is  consequently  impoverished  and  crippled  to  the  extenl 
of  the  difference  between  wrhat  she  actually  possesses  of 
wooded  surface  and  what  she  ought  to  have  retained. 

Italy  and  Spain  are  bared  of  trees  in  a  greater  degree  than 
France,  and  even  Russia,  which  we  habitually  consider  as  sub 
stantially  a  forest  country,  is  beginning  to  suffer  seriously  for 
want  of  wood.  Jourdier,  as  quoted  by  Clave,  observes  :  "  In 
stead  of  a  vast  territory  with  immense  forests,  which  we  expect 
to  meet,  one  sees  only  scattered  groves  thinned  by  the  wind  or 
by  the  axe  of  the  moujik,  grounds  cut  over  and  more  or  less 
recently  cleared  for  cultivation.  There  is  probably  not  a  single 
district  in  Russia  which  has  not  to  deplore  the  ravages  of  man 
or  of  fire,  those  two  great  enemies  of  Muscovite  sylviculture. 
This  is  so  true,  that  clear-sighted  men  already  foresee  a  crisis 
which  will  become  terrible,  unless  the  discovery  of  great  de 
posits  of  some  new  combustible,  as  pit  coal  or  anthracite,  shall 
diminish  its  evils."  * 

mountains  expose  her  territory  to  ranch  greater  injury  from  torrents,  and 
because  at  least  her  southern  provinces  are  more  frequently  visited  both 
by  extreme  drought  and  by  deluging  rains. 

*  Etudes  sur  V Economic  Forcstiere,  p.  261.  Clave  adds  (p.  262) :  "  The 
Russian  forests  are  very  unequally  distributed  through  the  territory  of  this 
vast  empire.  In  the  north  they  form  immense  masses,  and  cover  whole 
provinces,  while  in  the  south  they  are  so  completely  wanting  that 
the  inhabitants  have  no  other  fuel  than  straw,  dung,  rushes,  and  heath." 
*  *  *  "At  Moscow,  firewood  costs  thirty  per  cent,  more  than  at 
Paris,  while,  at  the  distance  of  a  few  leagues,  it  sells  for  a  tenth  of  that 
price." 

This  state  of  things  is  partly  due  to  the  want  of  facilities  of  transporta 
tion,  and  some  parts  of  the  United  States  are  in  a  similar  condition. 
During  a  severe  winter,  six  or  seven  years  ago,  the  sudden  freezing  of  the 
canals  and  rivers,  before  a  large  American  town  had  received  its  usual 
supply  of  fuel,  occasioned  an  enormous  rise  in  the  price  of  wood  and  coal, 
and  the  poor  suffered  severely  for  want  of  it.  Within  a  few  hours  of  the 
city  were  large  forests  and  an  abundant  stock  of  firewood  felled  and  pre 
pared  for  burning.  This  might  easily  have  been  carried  to  town  by  the 


FORESTS   OF   GERMANY.  299 

Germany,  from  character  of  surface  and  climate,  and  from 
the  attention  which  has  long  been  paid  in  all  the  German 
States  to  sylviculture,  is,  taken  as  a  whole,  in  a  far  better  con 
dition  in  this  respect  than  its  more  southern  neighbors ;  but  in 
the  Alpine  provinces  of  Bavaria  and  Austria,  the  same  improvi 
dence  which  marks  the  rural  economy  of  the  corresponding  dis 
tricts  of  Switzerland,  Italy,  and  France,  is  producing  effects 
hardly  less  disastrous.  As  an  instance  of  the  scarcity  of  fuel  in 
some  parts  of  the  territory  of  Bavaria,  where,  not  long  since, 
wood  abounded,  I  may  mention  the  fact  that  the  water  of  salt 
springs  is,  in  some  instances,  conveyed  to  the  distance  of  sixty 


railroads  wliicli  passed  through  the  woods ;  but  the  managers  of  the  roads 
refused  to  receive  it  as  freight,  because  the  opening  of  a  new  market 
for  wood  might  raise  the  price  of  the  fuel  they  employed  for  their  loco 
motives. 

Hohenstein,  who  was  long  professionally  employed  as  a  forester  in  Rus 
sia,  describes  the  consequences  of  the  general  war  upon  the  woods  in  that 
country  as  already  most  disastrous,  and  as  threatening  still  more  ruinous 
evils.  The  river  Volga,  the  life  artery  of  Eussian  internal  commerce,  is 
drying  up  from  this  cause,  and  the  great  Muscovite  plains  are  fast  ad 
vancing  to  a  desolation  like  that  of  Persia. — Der  Wold,  p.  228. 

The  level  of  the  Caspian  Sea  is  eighty-three  feet  lower  than  that  of  the 
Sea  of  Azoff,  and  the  surface  of  Lake  Aral  is  fast  sinking.  Von  Baer 
maintains  that  the  depression  of  the  Caspian  was  produced  by  a  sudden 
subsidence,  from  geological  causes,  and  not  gradually  by  excess  of  evapo 
ration  over  supply.  See  KaspiscJie  Studien,  p.  25.  But  this  subsidence 
diminished  the  area  and  consequently  the  evaporation  of  that  sea,  and  the 
rivers  which  once  maintained  its  ancient  equilibrium  ought  to  raise  it  to 
its  former  level,  if  their  own  flow  had  not  been  diminished.  It  is,  indeed, 
not  proved  that  the  laying  bare  of  a  wooded  country  diminishes  the  total 
annual  precipitation  upon  it ;  but  it  is  certain  that  the  summer  evaporation 
from  the  surface  of  a  champaign  region,  like  that  through  which  the 
Volga,  its  tributaries,  and  the  feeders  of  Lake  Aral  flow,  is  increased  by 
the  removal  of  its  woods.  Hence,  though  as  much  rain  may  still  fall  in 
the  valleys  of  those  rivers  as  when  their  whole  surface  was  covered  with 
forests,  a  less  quantity  of  water  may  be  delivered  by  them  since  their 
basins  were  cleared,  and  therefore  the  present  condition  of  the  inland 
waters  in  question  may  be  due  to  the  removal  of  the  forests  in  their 
basins. 


300 


AMERICAN   FOEESTS. 


miles,  in  iron  pipes,  to  reacli  a  supply  of  fuel  for  boiling  it 
down.* 

Forests  of  the  United  States  and  Canada. 

The  vast  forests  of  tlie  United  States  and  Canada  cannot 
long  resist  the  improvident  habits  of  the  backwoodsman  and 
the  increased  demand  for  lumber.  According  to  the  census 
of  the  former  country  for  1860,  which  gives  returns  of  the 

*  Rentzsch  (Der  Wald,  etc.,  pp.   123,  124)  states  the  proportions  of 
woodland  in  different  European  countries  as  follows : 


Per  cent. 

Acre*  per 
head  of  pop 
ulation. 

Per  cent. 

Atres  per 
beaJ  of  popu- 

26  58 

0  6638 

Switzerland 

15 

0  396 

Groat  Britain 

5 

0  1 

Holland 

710 

0  12 

France       ... 

1679 

0  3766 

Belgium  

18.52 

0.186 

Russia 

SO  90 

4  28 

5  52 

0291 

60 

8  55 

440 

0182 

Norway.  . 

66 

2461 

Sardinia  

12.29 

0.223 

Denmark 

550 

0  22 

Naples        

9.43 

0.138 

Probably  no  European  countries  can  so  well  dispense  with  the  forests, 
in  their  capacity  of  conservative  influences,  as  England  and  Ireland.  Their 
insular  position  and  latitude  secure  an  abundance  of  atmospheric  moisture, 
and  the  general  inclination  of  surface  is  not  such  as  to  expose  it  to  special 
injury  from  torrents.  The  due  proportion  of  woodland  in  England  and 
Ireland  is,  therefore,  almost  purely  an  economical  question,  to  be  decided 
by  the  comparative  direct  pecuniary  return  from  forest  growth,  pasturage, 
and  plough  land. 

In  Scotland,  where  the  country  is  for  the  most  part  more  broken  and 
mountainous,  the  general  destruction  of  the  forests  has  been  attended  with 
very  serious  evils,  and  it  is  in  Scotland  that  many  of  the  most  extensive 
British  forest  plantations  have  now  been  formed.  But  although  the  incli 
nation  of  surface  in  Scotland  is  rapid,  the  geological  constitution  of  the  soil 
is  not  of  a  character  to  promote  such  destructive  degradation  by  running 
water  as  in  Southern  France,  and  it  has  not  to  contend  with  the  parching 
droughts  by  which  the  devastations  of  the  torrents  are  rendered  more  in 
jurious  in  that  part  of  the  French  empire. 

In  giving  the  proportion  of  woodland  to  population,  I  compute 
Rentzsch's  Morgen  at  .3882  of  an  English  acre,  because  I  find,  by  Alexan 
der's  most  accurate  and  valuable  Dictionary  of  Weights  and  Measures, 
that  this  is  the  value  of  the  Dresden  Morgen,  and  Rentzsch  is  a  Saxon 
writer.  In  the  different  German  States,  there  are  more  than  twenty  dif 


AMERICAN    FORESTS.  301 

*f sawed  and  planed  lumber"  alone,  timber  for  framing  and 
for  a  vast  variety  of  mechanical  purposes  being  omitted  alto 
gether,  the  value  of  the  former  material  prepared  for  market 
in  the  United  States  was,  in  1850,  $58,521,976;  in  1860, 
$95,912,286.  The  quantity  of  unsawed  lumber  is  not  likely  to 
have  increased  in  the  same  proportion,  because  comparatively 
little  is  exported  in  that  condition,  and  because  masonry  is  fast 
taking  the  place  of  carpentry  in  building,  and  stone,  brick, 
and  iron  are  used  instead  of  timber  more  largely  than  they 
were  ten  years  ago.  Still  a  much  greater  quantity  of  unsawed 
lumber  must  have  been  marketed  in  1860  than  in  1850.  It 
must  further  be  admitted  that  the  price  of  lumber  rose  consid 
erably  between  those  dates,  and  consequently  that  the  increase 
in  quantity  is  not  to  be  measured  by  the  increase  in  pecuniary 
value.  Perhaps  this  rise  of  prices  may  even  be  sufficient  to 
make  the  entire  difference  between  the  value  of  "  sawed  and 
planed  lumber  "  produced  in  the  ten  years  in  question  by  the 
six  Kew  England  States  (21  per  cent.),  and  the  six  Middle 
States  (15  per  cent.)  ;  but  the  amount  produced  by  the  "West 
ern  and  by  the  Southern  States  had  doubled,  and  that  returned 
from  the  Pacific  States  and  Territories  had  trebled  in  value  in 
the  same  interval,  so  that  there  was  certainly,  in  those  States,  a 
large  increase  in  the  actual  quantity  prepared  for  sale. 

I  greatly  doubt  whether  any  one  of  the  American  States, 
except,  perhaps,  Oregon,  has,  at  this  moment,  more  woodland 
than  it  ought  permanently  to  preserve,  though,  no  doubt,  a 
different  distribution  of  the  forests  in  all  of  them  might  be 
highly  advantageous.  It  is  a  great  misfortune  to  the  Amer 
ican  Union  that  the  State  Governments  have  so  generally 
disposed  of  their  original  domain  to  private  citizens.  It  is 

ferent  land  measures  known  by  the  name  of  Morgen,  varying  from  about 
one  third  of  an  acre  to  more  than  three  acres  in  value.  When  will  the 
world  be  wise  enough  to  unite  in  adopting  the  French  metrical  and  mone 
tary  systems  ?  As  to  the  latter,  never  while  Christendom  continues  to  be 
ruled  by  money  changers,  who  can  compel  you  to  part  with  your  sover 
eigns  in  France  at  twenty-five  francs,  and  in  England  to  accept  fifteen  shil« 
lings  for  your  napoleons.  I  speak  as  a  sufferer.  Experto  credo  Roberto. 


302  AMERICAN   FORESTS. 

true  that  public  property  is  not  sufficiently  respected  in  the 
United  States  ;  and  it  is  also  true  that,  within  the  memory  of 
almost  every  man  of  mature  age,  timber  was  of  so  little  value 
in  that  country,  that  the  owners  of  private  woodlands  sub 
mitted,  almost  without  complaint,  to  what  would  be  regarded 
elsewhere  as  very  aggravated  trespasses  upon  them."-  Under 

*  According  to  the  maxims  of  English  jurisprudence,  the  common  law 
consists  of  general  customs  so  long  established  that  "  the  memory  of  man 
runneth  not  to  the  contrary."  In  other  words,  long  custom  makes  law. 
In  ne\v  countries,  the  change  of  circumstances  creates  new  customs,  and, 
in  time,  new  law,  without  the  aid  of  legislation.  Had  the  American  colo 
nists  observed  a  more  sparing  economy  in  the  treatment  of  their  woods,  a 
new  code  of  customary  forest  law  would  have  sprung  up  and  acquired  the 
force  of  a  statute.  Popular  habit  was  fast  elaborating  the  fundamental 
principles  of  such  a  code,  when  the  rapid  increase  in  th-3  value  of  timber, 
in  consequence  of  the  reckless  devastation  of  the  woodlands,  made  it  the 
interest  of  the  proprietors  to  interfere  with  this  incipient  system  of  forest 
jurisprudence,  and  appeal  to  the  rules  of  English  law  for  the  protection 
of  their  woods.  The  courts  have  sustained  these  appeals,  and  forest  prop 
erty  is  now  legally  as  inviolable  as  any  other,  though  common  opinion 
still  combats  the  course  of  judicial  decision  on  such  questions. 

In  the  United  States,  swarms  of  honey  bees,  on  leaving  the  parent 
hive,  often  take  up  their  quarters  in  hollow  trees  in  the  neighboring 
woods.  By  the  early  customs  of  New  England,  the  finder  of  a  "  bee  tree" 
on  the  land  of  another  owner  was  regarded  as  entitled  to  the  honey  by 
right  of  discovery  ;  and  as  a  necessary  incident  of  that  right,  he  might  cut 
the  tree,  at  the  proper  season,  without  asking  permission  of  the  proprietor 
of  the  soil.  The  quantity  of  "  wild  honey  "  in  a  tree  was  often  large,  and 
"bee  hunting"  was  so  profitable  that  it  became  almost  a  regular  pro 
fession.  The  "bee  hunter"  sallied  forth  with  a  small  box  containing 
honey  and  a  little  vermilion.  The  bees  which  were  attracted  by  the 
honey  marked  themselves  with  the  vermilion,  and  hence  were  more 
readily  followed  in  their  homeward  flight,  and  recognized  when  they  re 
turned  a  second  time  for  booty.  When  loaded  with  spoil,  this  insect  re 
turns  to  his  hive  by  the  shortest  route,  and  hence  a  straight  line  is  popu 
larly  called  in  America  a  "  bee  line."  By  such  a  line,  the  hunter  followed 
the  bees  to  their  sylvan  hive,  marked  the  tree  with  his  initials,  and  re 
turned  to  secure  his  prize  in  the  autumn.  "When  the  right  of  the  "  bee 
hunter  "  was  at  last  disputed  by  the  land  proprietors,  it  was  with  difficulty 
that  judgments  could  be  obtained,  in  inferior  courts,  in  favor  of  the  latter, 
and  it  was  only  after  repeated  decisions  of  the  higher  legal  tribunals  that 
the  superior  right  of  the  owner  of  the  soil  was  at  last  acquiesced  in. 


ECONOMY  OF  THE  FOREST.  303 

such  circumstances,  it  is  difficult  to  protect  the  forest,  whether 
it  belong  to  the  state  or  to  individuals.  Property  of  this  kind 
would  be  subject  to  much  plunder,  as  well  as  to  frequent 
damage  by  fire.  The  destruction  from  these  causes  would, 
indeed,  considerably  lessen,  but  would  not  wholly  annihilate 
the  climatic  and  geographical  influences  of  the  forest,  or  ruin 
ously  diminish  its  value  as  a  regular  source  of  supply  of  fuel 
and  timber.  For  prevention  of  the  evils  upon  which  I  have 
so  long  dwelt,  the  American  people  must  look  to  the  diffusion 
of  general  intelligence  on  this  subject,  and  to  the  enlightened 
self  interest,  for  which  they  are  remarkable,  not  to  the  action 
of  their  local  or  general  legislatures.  Even  in  France,  govern 
ment  has  moved  with  too  slow  and  hesitating  a  pace,  and  pre 
ventive  measures  do  not  yet  compensate  destructive  causes. 
The  judicious  remarks  of  Troy  on  this  point  may  well  be 
applied  to  other  countries  than  France,  other  measures  of 
public  policy  than  the  preservation  of  the  woods.  "  To  move 
softly,"  says  he,  "  is  to  commit  the  most  dangerous,  the  most 
unpardonable  of  imprudences ;  it  diminishes  the  prestige  of 
authority ;  it  furnishes  a  triumph  to  the  sneerer  and  the  in 
credulous  ;  it  strengthens  opposition  and  encourages  resist 
ance  ;  it  ruins  the  administration  in  the  opinion  of  the  people, 
weakens  its  power  and  depresses  its  courage."  * 

The  Economy  of  the  Forest 

The  legislation  of  European  states  upon  sylviculture,  and 
the  practice  of  that  art,  divide  themselves  into  two  great 
branches — the  preservation  of  existing  forests,  and  the  creation 
of  new.  From  the  long  operation  of  causes  already  set  forth, 
what  is  understood  in  America  and  other  new  countries  by 
the  "primitive  forest,"  no  longer  exists  in  the  territories  which 
were  the  seats  of  ancient  civilization  and  empire,  except  upon 
a  small  scale,  and  in  remote  and  almost  inaccessible  glens  quite 
out  of  the  reach  of  ordinary  observation.  The  oldest  European 
woods,  indeed,  are  native,  that  is,  sprung  from  self-sown  seed, 

*  Etude  mr  le  Reboisemcnt  dcs  Montagnes,  p.  5. 


304  ECONOMY   OF   THE   FOItEST. 

or  from  the  roots  of  trees  which  have  been  felled  for  human 
purposes ;  but  their  growth  has  been  controlled,  in  a  variety 
of  ways,  by  man  and  by  domestic  animals,  and  they  always 
present  more  or  less  of  an  artificial  character  and  arrangement. 
Both  they  and  planted  forests,  which,  though  certainly  not 
few,  are  of  recent  date  in  Europe,  demand,  as  well  for  protec 
tion  as  for  promotion  of  growth,  a  treatment  different  in  some 
respects  from  that  which  would  be  suited  to  the  character  and 
wants  of  the  virgin  wood. 

On  this  latter  branch  of  the  subject,  experience  and  obser 
vation  have  not  yet  collected  a  sufficient  stock  of  facts  to  serve 
for  the  construction  of  a  complete  system  of  sylviculture  ;  but 
the  management  of  the  forest  as  it  exists  in  France — the  dif 
ferent  zones  and  climates  of  which  country  present  many  points 
of  analogy  with  those  of  the  United  States  and  some  of  the 
British  colonies — has  been  carefully  studied,  and  several  man 
uals  of  practice  have  been  prepared  for  the  foresters  of  that 
empire.  I  believe  the  best  of  these  is  the  GOUTS  Elementaire 
de  Culture  des  Bois  cree  a  Vficole  Forestiere  de  Nancy ',  par 
M.  Lorentz,  complete  et  pullie  par  A.  Parade,  with  a  supple 
ment  under  the  title  of  Cours  d>  Amenagement  des  Forets^par 
Henri  banquette.  The  Etudes  sur  V Economic  Forestiere,  par 
Jules  Clave,  which  I  have  often  quoted,  presents  a  great  num 
ber  of  interesting  views  on  this  subject,  and  well  deserves  to 
be  translated  for  the  use  of  the  English  and  American  reader  ; 
but  it  is  not  designed  as  a  practical  guide,  and  it  does  not 
profess  to  be  sufficiently  specific  in  its  details  to  serve  that 
purpose.  Notwithstanding  the  difference  of  conditions  be 
tween  the  aboriginal  and  the  trained  forest,  the  judicious 
observer  who  aims  at  the  preservation  of  the  former  will  reap 
much  instruction  from  the  treatises  I  have  cited,  and  I  believe 
he  will  be  convinced  that  the  sooner  a  natural  wood  is  brought 
into  the  state  of  an  artificially  regulated  one,  the  better  it  is 
for  all  the  multiplied  interests  which  depend  on  the  wise  ad 
ministration  of  this  branch  of  public  economy.* 

*  "  In  America,"  says  Clave"  (p.  124,  125),  "  where  there  is  a  vast  ex 
tent  of  land  almost  without  pecuniary  value,  but  where  labor  is  dear  and 


QUALITY    OF  TIMBER.  305 

One  consideration  bearing  on  this  subject  has  received  less 
attention  than  it  merits,  because  most  persons  interested  in 
such  questions  have  not  opportunities  for  the  comparison  I 
refer  to.  I  mean  the  great  general  superiority  of  cultivated 
timber  to  that  of  strictly  spontaneous  growth.  I  say  general 
superiority,  because  there  are  exceptions  to  the  rule.  The 
white  pine,  Pinus  strobus,  for  instance,  and  other  trees  of  sim 
ilar  character  and  uses,  require,  for  their  perfect  growth,  a 
density  of  forest  vegetation  around  them,  which  protects  them 
from  too  much  agitation  by  wind,  and  from  the  persistence  of 
the  lateral  branches  which  fill  the  wood  with  knots.  A  pine 
which  has  grown  under  those  conditions  possesses  a  tall, 
straight  stem,  admirably  fitted  for  masts  and  spars,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  its  wrood  is  almost  wholly  free  from  knots,  is  reg 
ular  in  annular  structure,  soft  and  uniform  in  texture,  and, 
consequently,  superior  to  almost  all  other  timber  for  joinery. 
If,  while  a  large  pine  is  spared,  the  broad-leaved  or  other 

the  rate  of  interest  high,  it  is  profitable  to  till  a  large  surface  at  the  least 
possible  cost;  extensive  cultivation  is  there  the  most  advantageous.  In 
England,  France,  and  Germany,  where  every  corner  of  soil  is  occupied, 
aiid  the  least  bit  of  ground  is  sold  at  a  high  price,  but  where  labor  and 
capital  are  comparatively  cheap,  it  is  wisest  to  employ  intensive  cultiva 
tion.  *  *  *  All  the  efforts  of  the  cultivator  ought  to  be  directed  to 
the  obtaining  of  a  given  result  with  the  least  sacrifice,  and  there  is  equally 
a  loss  to  the  commonwealth  if  the  application  of  improved  agricultural 
processes  be  neglected  where  they  are  advantageous,  or  if  they  be  em 
ployed  where  they  are  not  required.  *  *  *  In  this  point  of  view, 
sylviculture  must  follow  the  same  laws  as  agriculture,  and,  like  it,  be 
modified  according  to  the  economical  conditions  of  different  states.  In 
countries  abounding  in  good  forests,  and  thinly  peopled,  elementary  and 
cheap  methods  must  be  pursued ;  in  civilized  regions,  where  a  dense  pop 
ulation  requires  that  the  soil  shall  be  made  to  produce  all  it  can  yield,  the 
regular  artificial  forest,  with  all  the  processes  that  science  teaches,  should 
be  cultivated.  It  would  be  absurd  to  apply  to  the  endless  woods  of  Brazil 
and  of  Canada  the  method  of  the  Spessart  by  "  double  stages,"  and  not 
less  so  in  our  country,  where  every  yard  of  ground  has  a  high  value,  to 
leave  to  nature  the  task  of  propagating  trees,  and  to  content  ourselves 
with  cutting,  every  twenty  or  twenty-five  years,  the  meagre  growths  that 
chance  may  have  produced." 
20 


306  THE   ARTIFICIAL  FOREST. 

smaller  trees  around  it  are  felled,  the  swaying  of  the  tree  from 
the  action  of  the  wind  mechanically  produces  separations 
between  the  layers  of  annual  growth,  and  greatly  diminishes 
the  value  of  the  timber. 

The  same  defect  is  often  observed  in  pines  which,  from 
some  accident  of  growth,  have  much  overtopped  their  fellows 
in  the  virgin  forest.  The  white  pine,  growing  in  the  fields,  or 
in  open  glades  in  the  woods,  is  totally  different  from  the  true 
forest  tree,  both  in  general  aspect  and  in  quality  of  wood.  Its 
stem  is  much  shorter,  its  top  less  tapering,  its  foliage  denser 
and  more  inclined  to  gather  into  tufts,  its  branches  more 
numerous  and  of  larger  diameter,  its  wood  shows  much  more 
distinctly  the  divisions  of  annual  growth,  is  of  coarser  grain, 
harder  and  more  difficult  to  work  into  mitre  joints.  Inter 
mixed  with  the  most  valuable  pines  in  the  American  forests, 
are  met  many  trees  of  the  character  I  have  just  described. 
The  lumbermen  call  them  "  saplings,"  and  generally  regard 
them  as  different  in  species  from  the  true  white  pine,  but  bot 
anists  are  unable  to  establish  a  distinction  between  them,  and 
as  they  agree  in  almost  all  respects  with  trees  grown  in  the 
open  grounds  from  known  white-pine  seedlings,  I  believe  their 
peculiar  character  is  due  to  unfavorable  circumstances  in  their 
early  growth.  The  pine,  then,  is  an  exception  to  the  general 
rule  as  to  the  inferiority  of  the  forest  to  the  open-ground  tree. 
The  pasture  oak  and  pasture  beech,  on  the  contrary,  are  well 
known  to  produce  far  better  timber  than  those  grown  in  the 
woods,  and  there  are  few  trees  to  which  the  remark  is  not 
equally  applicable.* 

*  It  is  often  laid  down  as  a  universal  law,  that  the  wood  of  trees  of 
slow  vegetation  is  superior  to  that  of  quick  growth.  This  is  one  of  those 
commonplaces  by  which  men  love  to  shield  themselves  from  the  labor  of 
painstaking  observation.  It  has,  in  fact,  so  many  exceptions,  that  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  it  is  in  any  sense  true.  Most  of  the  cedars  are  slow 
of  growth ;  but  while  the  timber  of  some  of  them  is  firm  and  durable,  that 
of  others  is  light,  brittle,  and  perishable.  The  hemlock  spruce  is  slower 
of  growth  than  the  pines,  but  its  wood  is  of  very  little  value.  The  pasture 
oak  and  beech  show  a  breadth  of  grain — and,  of  course,  an  annual  mere- 


THE   ARTIFICIAL   FOREST.  307 

Another  advantage  of  the  artificially  regulated  forest  is, 
that  it  admits  of  such  grading  of  the  ground  as  to  favor  the 
retention  or  discharge  of  water  at  will,  while  the  facilities  it 
affords  for  selecting  and  duly  proportioning,  as  well  as  prop 
erly  spacing,  the  trees  which  compose  it,  are  too  obvious  to 
require  to  be  more  than  hinted  at.  In  conducting  these  opera 
tions,  we  must  have  a  diligent  eye  to  the  requirements  of 
nature,  and  must  remember  that  a  wood  is  not  an  arbitrary 
assemblage  of  trees  to  be  selected  and  disposed  according  to 
the  caprice  of  its  owner.  "  A  forest,"  says  Clave,  "  is  not,  as 
is  often  supposed,  a  simple  collection  of  trees  succeeding  each 
other  in  long  perspective,  without  bond  of  union,  and  capable 
of  isolation  from  each  other ;  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  whole, 
the  different  parts  of  which  are  interdependent  upon  each 
otlujr,  and  it  constitutes,  so  to  speak,  a  true  individuality. 
Every  forest  has  a  special  character,  determined  by  the  form 
of  the  surface  it  grows  upon,  the  kinds  of  trees  that  compose 
it,  and  the  manner  in  which  they  are  grouped."  * 

merit — twice  as  great  as  trees  of  the  same  species  grown  in  the  woods ;  and 
the  American  locust,  Robinia  pseudacacia,  the  wood  of  which  is  of  ex 
treme  toughness  and  durability,  is,  of  all  trees  indigenous  to  Northeastern 
America,  by  far  the  most  rapid  in  growth. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  mutual  interdependence  of  the  mechanic  arts, 
I  may  mention  that  in  Italy,  where  stone,  brick,  and  plaster  are  almost  the 
only  materials  used  in  architecture,  and  where  the  "  hollow  ware  "  kitchen 
implements  are  of  copper  or  of  clay,  the  ordinary  tools  for  working  wood 
are  of  a  very  inferior  description,  and  the  locust  timber  is  found  too  hard 
for  their  temper.  Southey  informs  us,  in  "  Espriella's  Letters,"  that  when  a 
email  quantity  of  mahogany  was  brought  to  England,  early  in  the  last 
century,  the  cabinetmakers  were  unable  to  use  it,  from  the  defective  tem 
per  of  their  tools,  until  the  demand  for  furniture  from  the  new  wood  com 
pelled  them  to  improve  the  quality  of  their  implements.  In  America,  the 
cheapness  of  wood  long  made  it  the  preferable  material  for  almost  all  pur 
poses  to  which  it  could  by  any  possibility  be  applied.  The  mechanical 
cutlery  and  artisans'  tools  of  the  United  States  are  of  admirable  temper, 
finish,  and  convenience,  and  no  wood  is  too  hard,  or  otherwise  too  refrac 
tory,  to  be  wrought  with  great  facility,  both  by  hand  tools  and  by  the 
multitude  of  ingenious  machines  which  the  Americans  have  invented  for 
this  purpose. 

*  jOftude*  ForestUres,  p.  7. 


308  VARIETY   OF   TREES   IN   AMERICA. 

European  and  American  Trees  compared. 

The  woods  of  North  America  are  strikingly  distinguished 
from  those  of  Europe  by  the  vastly  greater  variety  of  species 
they  contain.  According  to  Clave,  there  are  in  "  France  and 
in  most  parts  of  Europe  "  only  about  twenty  forest  trees,  five 
or  six  of  which  are  spike-leaved  and  resinous,  the  remainder 
broad-leaved."  "x"  Our  author,  however,  doubtless  means  gen 
era,  though  he  uses  the  word  especes.  Rossmassler  enumerates 
fifty-seven  species  of  forest  trees  as  found  in  Germany,  but 
some  of  these  are  mere  shrubs,  some  are  fruit  and  properly 
garden  trees,  and  some  others  are  only  varieties  of  familiar 
species.  The  valuable  manual  of  Parade  describes  about  the 
same  number,  including,  however,  two  of  American  origin — 
the  locust,  JKobinia  pseudacacia,  and  the  Wey mouth  or  white 
pine,  Pinus  strobus — and  the  cedar  of  Lebanon  from  Asia, 
though  it  is  indigenous  in  Algeria  also.  We  may  then  safely 
say  that  Europe  does  not  possess  above  forty  or  fifty  trees  of 
such  economical  value  as  to  be  worth  the  special  care  of  the 
forester,  while  the  oak  alone  numbers  not  less  than  thirty 
species  in  the  United  States,f  and  some  other  North  American 
genera  are  almost  equally  diversified.^: 

*  Etudes  Forestieres,  p.  V. 

t  For  very  full  catalogues  of  American  forest  trees,  and  remarks  on 
their  geographical  distribution,  consult  papers  on  the  subject  by  Dr.  J.  G. 
Cooper,  in  the  Eeport  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution  for  1858,  and  the 
Report  of  the  United  States  Patent  Office,  Agricultural  Division,  for  1860. 

t  Although  Spenser's  catalogue  of  trees  occurs  in  the  first  canto  of  the 
first  book  of  the  "  Faery  Queene  " — the  only  canto  of  that  exquisite  poem 
actually  read  by  most  students  of  English  literature — it  is  not  so  generally 
familiar  as  to  make  the  quotation  of  it  altogether  superfluous : 

VII. 

Enforst  to  seeke  some  covert  nigh  at  hand, 
A  shadie  grove  not  farr  away  they  spide, 
That  promist  ayde  the  tempest  to  withstand  ; 
Whose  loftie  trees,  yclad  with  sommers  pride, 
Did  epred  so- broad,  that  heavens  light  did  hide, 
Not  perceable  with  power  of  any  stnrr  : 
And  all  within  were  pathes  and  alleies  wide, 
With  footing  worne,  and  leading  inward  farr  ; 
Faire  harbour  that  them  seems  ;  so  in  they  entred  ar. 


EUROPEAN   TREES.  309 

Few  European  trees,  except  those  bearing  edible  fruit,  have 
been  naturalized  in  the  United  States,  while  the  American 
forest  flora  has  made  large  contributions  to  that  of  Europe.  It 
is  a  very  poor  taste  which  has  led  to  the  substitution  of  the 
less  picturesque  European  for  the  graceful  and  majestic  Amer 
ican  elm,  in  some  public  grounds  in  the  United  States.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  European  mountain  ash — which  in  beauty 
and  healthfullness  of  growth  is  superior  to  our  own — the  horse 
chestnut,  and  the  abele,  or  silver  poplar,  are  valuable  additions 
to  the  ornamental  trees  of  North  America.  The  Swiss  arve 
or  zirbelkiefer,  Pinus  cenibra,  which  yields  a  well-flavored 
edible  seed  and  furnishes  excellent  wood  for  carving,  the  um 
brella  pine  which  also  bears  a  seed  agreeable  to  the  taste,  and 
which,  from  the  color  of  its  foliage  and  the  beautiful  form  of 
its  dome-like  crown,  is  among  the  most  elegant  of  trees,  the 
white  birch  of  Central  Europe,  with  its  pendulous  branches 
almost  rivalling  those  of  the  weeping  willow  in  length,  flexi 
bility,  and  gracefulness  of  fall,  and,  especially,  the  "  cypresse 
funerall,"  might  be  introduced  into  the  United  States  with 
great  advantage  to  the  landscape.  The  European  beech  and 
chestnut  furnish  timber  of  far  better  quality  than  that  of  their 
American  congeners.  The  fruit  of  the  European  chestnut, 

Till. 

And  foorth  they  passe,  with  pleasure  forward  led, 
Joying  to  heare  the  birdes  sweete  harmony, 
Which  therein  shrouded  from  the  tempest  dred, 
Seetnd  in  their  song  to  scorne  the  cruell  sky. 
Much  can  they  praise  the  trees  so  straight  and  hy, 
The  sayling  pine  ;  the  cedar  stout  and  tall ; 
The  vine-propp  elm  ;  the  poplar  never  dry  ; 
The  builder  oake,  sole  king  of  forrests  all ; 
The  aspine  good  for  staves  ;  the  cypresse  funerall ; 

I  x. 

The  laurcll,  meed  of  mightic  conquerours 

And  poets  eage  ;  the  firre  that  weepeth  still ; 

The  willow,  worne  of  forlorn  paramours  ; 

The  eugh.  obedient  to  the  benders  will ; 

The  birch  for  shaftes  ;  the  sallow  for  the  mill  ; 

The  mirrhe  sweete-bleeding  in  the  bitter  wound  ; 

The  warlike  beech  ;  the  ash  for  nothing  ill ; 

The  frnitfull  olive  ;  and  the  platane  round ; 

The  carver  holme  ;  the  maple  seeldom  inward  sound. 


310  EUROPEAN   TEEES. 

though  inferior  to  the  American  in  flavor,  is  larger,  and  is  an 
important  article  of  diet  among  the  French  and  Italian  peas 
antry.  The  walnut  of  Europe,  though  not  equal  to  some  of  the 
American  species  in  beauty  of  growth  or  of  wood,  or  to  others 
in  strength  and  elasticity  of  fibre,  is  valuable  for  its  timber  and 
its  oil.*  The  maritime  pine,  which  has  proved  of  such  im 
mense  use  in  fixing  drifting  sands  in  France,  may  perhaps  be 
better  adapted  to  this  purpose  than  any  of  the  pines  of  the 
New  World,  and  it  is  of  great  importance  for  its  turpentine, 
resin,  and  tar.  The  epicea,  or  common  fir,  Abies  picea,  Abies 

*  The  walnut  is  a  more  valuable  tree  than  is  generally  supposed.  It 
yields  one  third  of  the  oil  produced  in  France,  and  in  this  respect  occupies 
an  intermediate  position  between  the  olive  of  the  south,  and  the  oleaginous 
seeds  of  the  north.  A  hectare  (about  two  and  a  half  acres),  will  produce 
nuts  to  the  value  of  five  hundred  francs  a  year,  which  cost  nothing  but 
the  gathering.  Unfortunately,  its  maturity  must  be  long  waited  for,  and 
more  nut-trees  are  felled  than  planted.  The  demand  for  its  wood  in 
cabinet  work  is  the  principal  cause  of  its  destruction.  See  LAVERGXE, 
Economic  Rurale  de  la  France,  p.  253. 

According  to  Cosiino  Ridolfi  (Lezioni  Orali,  ii.  p.  424),  France  obtains 
three  times  as  much  oil  from  the  walnut  as  from  the  olive,  and  nearly  as 
much  as  from  all  oleaginous  seeds  together.  He  states  that  the  walnut  bears 
nuts  at  the  age  of  twenty  years,  and  yields  its  maximum  product  at  seventy, 
and  that  a  hectare  of  ground,  with  thirty  trees,  or  twelve  to  the  acre,  is 
equal  to  a  capital  of  twenty -five  hundred  francs. 

The  nut  of  this  tree  is  known  in  the  United  States  as  the  "English 
walnut."  The  fruit  and  the  wood  much  resemble  those  of  the  American 
black  walnut,  Juglans  nigra,  but  for  cabinet  work  the  American  is  the 
more  beautiful  material,  especially  when  the  large  knots  are  employed. 
The  timber  of  the  European  species,  when  straight  grained,  and  clear,  or 
free  from  knots,  is,  for  ordinary  purposes,  better  than  that  of  the  American 
black  walnut,  but  bears  no  comparison  with  the  wood  of  the  hickory,  when 
strength  combined  with  elasticity  is  required,  and  its  nut  is  very  inferior 
in  taste  to  that  of  the  shagbark,  as  well  as  to  the  butternut,  which  it  some 
what  resembles. 

"The  chestnut  is  more  valuable  still,  for  it  produces  on  a  sterile  soil, 
which,  without  it,  would  yield  only  ferns  and  heaths,  an  abundant  nutri 
ment  for  man." — LAVERGNE,  Economie  Rurale  de  la  France,  p.  253. 

I  believe  the  varieties  developed  by  cultivation  are  less  numerous  in 
the  walnut  than  in  the  chestnut,  which  latter  tree  is  often  grafted  in 
Southern  Europe. 


TKEES   OF  SOUTHERN   EUROPE.  311 

excelsa,  Picea  excelsa,  abundant  in  the  mountains  of  France 
and  the  contiguous  country,  is  known  for  its  product.  Bur 
gundy  pitch,  and,  as  it  nourishes  in  a  greater  variety  of  soil 
and  climate  than  almost  any  other  spike-leaved  tree,  it  might 
be  well  worth  transplantation.*  The  cork  oak  has  been  intro 
duced  into  the  United  States,  I  believe,  and  would  undoubt 
edly  thrive  in  the  Southern  section  of  the  Union. f 

In  the  walnut,  the  chestnut,  the  cork  oak,  the  mulberry, 
the  olive,  the  orange,  the  lemon,  the  fig,  and  the  multitude  of 
other  trees  which,  by  their  fruit,  or  by  other  products,  yield 
an  annual  revenue,  nature  has  provided  Southern  Europe  with 

*  This  fir  is  remarkable  for  its  tendency  to  cicatrize  or  heal  over  its 
stumps,  a  property  which  it  possesses  in  common  with,  some  other  firs,  the 
maritime  pine,  and  the  European  larch.  When  these  trees  grow  in  thick 
clumps,  their  roots  are  apt  to  unite  by  a  species  of  natural  grafting,  and 
if  one  of  them  be  felled,  although  its  own  proper  rootlets  die,  the  stump 
may  continue,  sometimes  for  a  century,  to  receive  nourishment  from  the 
radicles  of  the  surrounding  trees,  and  a  dome  of  wood  and  bark  of  con 
siderable  thickness  be  formed  over  it.  The  cicatrization  is,  however,  only 
apparent,  for  the  entire  stump,  except  the  outside  ring  of  annual  growth, 
soon  dies,  and  even  decays  within  its  covering,  without  sending  out  new 
shoots. 

t  At  the  age  of  twelve  or  fifteen  years,  the  cork  tree  is  stripped  of  its 
outer  bark  for  the  first  time.  This  first  yield  is  of  inferior  quality,  and  is 
employed  for  floats  for  nets  and  buoys,  or  burnt  for  lampblack.  After  this, 
a  new  layer  of  cork,  an  inch  or  an  inch  and  a  quarter  in  thickness,  is  formed 
about  once  in  ten  years,  and  is  removed  in  large  sheets  without  injury  to 
the  tree,  which  lives  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  or  more.  According  to 
Clave  (p.  252),  the  annual  product  of  a  forest  of  cork  oaks  is  calculated  at 
about  660  kilogrammes,  worth  150  francs,  to  the  hectare,  which,  deducting 
expenses,  leaves  a  profit  of  100  francs.  This  is  about  equal  to  250  pound 
weight,  and  eight  dollars  profit  to  the  acre.  The  cork  oaks  of  the  national 
domain  in  Algeria  cover  about  500,000  acres,  and  are  let  to  individuals  at 
rates  which  are  expected,  when  the  whole  is  rented,  to  yield  to  the  state 
a  revenue  of  about  $2,000,000. 

George  Sand,  in  the  Histoire  tie  ma  Vie,  speaks  of  the  cork  forests  in 
Southern  France  as  among  the  most  profitable  of  rural  possessions,  and 
states,  what  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  noticed  elsewhere,  that  Eussia 
is  the  best  customer  for  cork.  The  large  sheets  taken  from  the  trees  are 
slit  into  thin  plates,  and  used  to  line  the  walls  of  apartments  in  that  colrl 
climate. 


312  TKEE8    OF    SOUTHERN    EUROPE. 

a  partial  compensation  for  the  loss  of  the  native  forest.  It  ia 
true  that  these  trees,  planted  as  most  of  them  are  at  such  dis 
tances  as  to  admit  of  cultivation,  or  of  the  growth  of  grass 
among  them,  are  but  an  inadequate  substitute  for  the  thick 
and  shady  wood ;  but  they  perform  to  a  certain  extent  the 
same  offices  of  absorption  and  transpiration,  they  shade  the 
surface  of  the  ground,  they  serve  to  break  the  force  of  the 
wind,  and  on  many  a  steep  declivity,  many  a  bleak  and  barren 
hillside,  the  chestnut  binds  the  soil  together  with  its  roots,  and 
prevents  tons  of  earth  and  gravel  from  washing  down  upon 
the  fields  and  the  gardens.  Fruit  trees  are  not  wanting,  cer 
tainly,  north  of  the  Alps.  The  apple,  the  pear,  and  the  prune 
are  important  in  the  economy  both  of  man  and  of  nature,  but 
they  are  far  less  numerous  in  Switzerland  and  Northern 
France  than  are  the  trees  I  have  mentioned  in  Southern 
Europe,  both  because  they  are  in  general  less  remunerative, 
and  because  the  climate,  in  higher  latitudes,  does  not  permit 
the  free  introduction  of  shade  trees  into  grounds  occupied  for 
agricultural  purposes.* 

The  multitude  of  species,  intermixed  as  they  are  in  their 
spontaneous  growth,  gives  the  American  forest  landscape  a 
variety  of  aspect  not  often  seen  in  the  woods  of  Europe,  and 

*  The  walnut,  the  chestnut,  the  apple,  and  the  pear  are  common  to 
the  border  between  the  countries  I  have  mentioned,  but  the  range  of  the 
other  trees  is  bounded  by  the  Alps,  and  by  a  well-defined  and  sharply 
drawn  line  to  the  west  of  those  mountains.  I  cannot  give  statistical  details 
as  to  the  number  of  any  of  the  trees  in  question,  or  as  to  the  area  they 
would  cover  if  brought  together  in  a  given  country.  From  some  peculi 
arity  in  the  sky  of  Europe,  cultivated  plants  will  thrive,  in  Northern  Italy, 
in  Southern  France,  and  even  in  Switzerland,  under  a  depth  of  shade 
where  no  crop,  not  even  grass,  worth  harvesting,  would  grow  in  the 
United  States  with  an  equally  high  summer  temperature.  Hence  the 
cultivation  of  all  these  trees  is  practicable  in  Europe  to  a  greater  extent 
than  would  be  supposed  reconcilable  with  the  interests  of  agriculture. 
Some  idea  of  the  importance  of  the  olive  orchards  may  be  formed  from 
the  fact  that  Sicily  alone,  an  island  scarcely  exceeding  10,000  square  miles 
in  area,  of  which  one  third  at  least  is  absolutely  barren,  has  exported  to 
the  single  port  of  Marseilles  more  than  2,000,000  pounds  weight  of  olive 
oil  per  year,  for  the  last  twenty  years 


THE   AMERICAN   FORESTS.  313 

the  gorgeous  tints,  which  nature  repeats  from  the  dying  dol 
phin  to  paint  the  falling  leaf  of  the  American  maples,  oaks, 
and  ash  trees,  clothe  the  hillsides  and  fringe  the  watercourses 
with  a  rainbow  splendor  of  foliage,  unsurpassed  by  the  bright 
est  groupings  of  the  tropical  flora.  It  must  be  admitted,  how 
ever,  that  both  the  northern  and  the  southern  declivities  of 
the  Alps  exhibit  a  nearer  approximation  to  this  rich  and  mul 
tifarious  coloring  of  autumnal  vegetation  than  most  American 
travellers  in  Europe  are  willing  to  allow  ;  and,  besides,  the 
small  deciduous  shrubs  which  often  carpet  the  forest  glades  of 
these  mountains  are  dyed  with  a  ruddy  and  orange  glow, 
which,  in  the  distant  landscape,  is  no  mean  substitute  for  the 
scarlet  and  crimson  and  gold  and  amber  of  the  transatlantic 
woodland. 

Xo  American  evergreen  known  to  me  resembles  the  um 
brella  pine  sufficiently  to  be  a  fair  object  of  comparison  with 
it.*  A  cedar,  very  common  above  the  Highlands  on  the 
Hudson,  is  extremely  like  the  cypress,  straight,  slender,  writh 
erect,  compressed  ramification,  and  feathered  to  the  ground, 
but  its  foliage  is  neither  so  dark  nor  so  dense,  the  tree  does  not 
attain  the  majestic  height  of  the  cypress,  nor  has  it  the  lithe 
flexibility  of  that  tree.  In  mere  shape,  the  Lombardy  poplar 
nearly  resembles  this  latter,  but  it  is  almost  a  profanation  to 
compare  the  two,  especially  when  they  are  agitated  by  the 
wind  ;  for  under  such  circumstances,  the  one  is  the  most  ma 
jestic,  the  other  the  most  ungraceful,  or — if  I  may  apply  such 
an  expression  to  anything  but  human  affectation  of  movement 
— the  most  awkward  of  trees.  The  poplar  trembles  before  the 
blast,  flutters,  struggles  wildly,  dishevels  its  foliage,  gropes 
around  with  its  feeble  branches,  and  hisses  as  in  impotent 
pa,ssion.  The  cypress  gathers  its  limbs  still  more  closely  to  its 
stem,  bows  a  gracious  salute  rather  than  an  humble  obeisance 

*  It  is  hard  to  say  how  far  the  peculiar  form  of  the  graceful  crown  of 
this  pine  is  due  to  pruning.  It  is  true  that  the  extremities  of  the  topmost 
branches  are  rarely  lopped,  but  the  lateral  boughs  are  almost  uniformly 
removed  to  a  very  considerable  height,  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  the 
shape  of  the  top  is  thereby  affected. 


314  EVERGREENS   OF    SOUTHERN    EUROPE. 

to  the  tempest,  bends  to  the  wind  with  an  elasticity  tha. 
assures  you  of  its  prompt  return  to  its  regal  attitude,  and  sends 
from  its  thick  leaflets  a  murmur  like  the  roar  of  the  far-off 
ocean. 

The  cypress  and  the  umbrella  pine  are  not  merely  conven 
tional  types  of  the  Italian  landscape.  They  are  essential  ele 
ments  in  a  field  of  rural  beauty  which  can  be  seen  in  perfec 
tion  only  in  the  basin  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  they  are  as 
characteristic  of  this  class  of  scenery  as  the  date  palm  is  of  the 
oases  of  the  desert.  There  is,  however,  this  difference  :  a  single 
cypress  or  pine  is  often  enough  to  shed  beauty  over  a  wide 
area ;  the  palm  is  a  social  tree,  and  its  beauty  is  not  so  much 
that  of  the  individual  as  of  the  group.  The  frequency  of  the 
cypress  and  the  pine — combined  with  the  fact  that  the  other 
trees  of  Southern  Europe  which  most  interest  a  stranger  from 
the  north,  the  orange  and  the  lemon,  the  cork  oak,  the  ilex, 
the  myrtle,  and  the  laurel,  are  evergreens — goes  far  to  explain 
the  beauty  of  the  winter  scenery  of  Italy.  Indeed  it  is  only  in 
the  winter  that  a  tourist  who  confines  himself  to  wheel  car 
riages  and  high  roads  can  acquire  any  notion  of  the  face  of  the 
earth,  and  form  any  proper  geographical  image  of  that  coun 
try.  At  other  seasons,  not  high  walls  only,  but  equally  imper 
vious  hedges,  and  now,  unhappily,  acacias  thickly  planted 
along  the  railway  routes,  confine  the  view  so  completely,  that 
the  arch  of  a  tunnel,  or  a  night  cap  over  the  traveller's  eyes, 
is  scarcely  a  more  effectual  obstacle  to  the  gratification  of  his 
curiosity.* 

*  Besides  this,  in  a  country  so  diversified  in  surface — I  wish  we  could 
with  the  French  say  aecidented — as  Italy  with  the  exception  of  the 
champaign  region  drained  by  the  Po,  every  new  field  of  view  reqaires 
either  an  extraordinary  coup  d'ail  in  the  spectator,  or  a  long  study,  in 
order  to  master  its  relief,  its  plans,  its  salient  and  retreating  angles.  In 
summer,  the  universal  greenery  confounds  light  and  shade,  distance  and 
foreground ;  and  though  the  impression  upon  a  traveller,  who  journeys  for 
the  sake  of  "  sensations,"  may  be  strengthened  by  the  mysterious  annihi 
lation  of  all  standards  for  the  measurement  of  space,  yet  the  superior 
intelligibility  of  the  winter  scenery  of  Italy  is  more  profitable  to  those 
who  see  with  a  view  to  analyze. 


THE   TAILLIS   OR   COPPICE.  315 

Sylviculture. 

The  art,  or,  as  the  Continental  foresters  call  it,  the  science 
of  sylviculture  has  been  so  little  pursued  in  England  and 
America,  that  its  nomenclature  has  not  been  introduced  into 
the  English  vocabulary,  and  I  shall  not  be  able  to  describe  its 
processes  with  technical  propriety  of  language,  without  occa 
sionally  borrowing  a  word  from  the  forest  literature  of  France 
and  Germany.  A  full  discussion  of  the  methods  of  sylvicul 
ture  would,  indeed,  be  out  of  place  in  a  work  like  the  present, 
but  the  almost  total  want  of  conveniently  accessible  means  of 
information  on  the  subject,  in  English-speaking  countries,  will 
justify  me  in  presenting  it  with  somewhat  more  of  detail  than 
wTould  otherwise  be  pertinent. 

The  two  best  known  methods  are  those  distinguished  as 
the  taillis,  copse  or  coppice  treatment,*  and  i\\Qfutaie,  for  which 
I  iind  no  English  equivalent,  but  which  may  not  inappro 
priately  be  called  the  full-growth  system.  A  tailUs,  copse,  or 
coppice,  is  a  wood  composed  of  shoots  from  the  roots  of  trees 
previously  cut  for  fuel  and  timber.  The  shoots  are  thinned 
out  from  time  to  time,  and  finally  cut,  either  after  a  fixed 
number  of  years,  or  after  the  young  trees  have  attained  to  cer 
tain  dimensions,  their  roots  being  then  left  to  send  out  a  new 
progeny  as  before.  This  is  the  cheapest  method  of  manage 
ment,  and  therefore  the  best  wherever  the  price  of  labor  and 
of  capital  bears  a  high  proportion  to  that  of  land  and  of  tim 
ber  ;  but  it  is  essentially  a  wasteful  economy.  If  the  wood 
land  is,  in  the  first  place,  completely  cut  over,  as  is  found  most 
convenient  in  practice,  the  young  shoots  have  neither  the  shade 
nor  the  protection  from  wind  so  important  to  forest  growth, 
and  their  progress  is  comparatively  slow,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  the  thick  clumps  they  form  choke  the  seedlings  that  may 

*  Copse,  or  coppice,  from  the  French  couper,  to  cut,  signifies  properly 
a  wood  the  trees  of  which  are  cut  at  certain  periods  of  immature  growth, 
and  allowed  to  shoot  up  again  from  the  roots ;  but  it  has  come  to  signify, 
very  commonly,  a  yotmg  wood,  grove,  or  thicket,  without  reference  to  its 
origin,  or  to  its  character  of  a  forest  crop. 


316  THE   TAILLIS   OK   COPPICE. 

have  sprouted  near  them.  If  domestic  animals  of  any  species 
are  allowed  to  roam  in  the  wood,  they  browse  upon  the  ter 
minal  buds  and  the  tender  branches,  thereby  stunting,  if  they 
do  not  kill,  the  young  trees,  and  depriving  them  of  all  beauty 
and  vigor  of  growth.  The  evergreens,  once  cut,  do  not  shoot 
up  again,*  and  the  mixed  character  of  the  forest — in  many 
respects  an  important  advantage,  if  not  an  indispensable  con 
dition  of  growth — is  lost ;  f  and  besides  this,  large  wood  of 

*  It  has  been  recently  stated,  upon  the  evidence  of  the  Government 
foresters  of  Greece,  and  of  the  queen's  gardener,  that  a  large  wood  hag 
been  discovered  in  Arcadia,  consisting  of  a  fir  which  has  the  property  of 
sending  tip  both  vertical  and  lateral  shoots  from  the  stump  of  felled  trees 
and  forming  a  new  crown.  It  was  at  first  supposed  that  this  forest  grew 
only  on  the  "  mountains,"  of  which  the  hero  of  About's  most  amusing  story, 
Le  Eoi  des  Montagues,  was  "king;  "  but  it  is  now  said  that  small  stumps, 
with  the  shoots  attached,  have  been  sent  to  Germany,  and  recognized  by 
able  botanists  as  true  natural  products. 

t  Natural  forests  are  rarely,  if  ever,  composed  of  trees  of  a  single 
species,  and  experience  has  shown  that  oaks  and  other  broad-leaved  trees, 
planted  as  artificial  woods,  require  to  be  mixed,  or  associated  with  others 
of  different  habits. 

In  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau,  "  oaks,  mingled  with  beeches  in  due 
proportion,"  says  Clave",  "may  arrive  at  the  age  of  five  or  six  hundred 
years  in  full  vigor,  and  attain  dimensions  which  I  have  never  seen  sur 
passed  ;  when,  however,  they  are  wholjy  unmixed  with  other  trees,  they 
begin  to  decay  and  die  at  the  top,  at  the  age  of  forty  or  fifty  years,  like 
men,  old  before  their  time,  weary  of  the  world,  and  longing  only  to  quit 
it.  This  has  been  observed  in  most  of  the  oak  plantations  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  and  they  have  not  been  able  to  attain  to  full  growth.  ^Yhen  the 
vegetation  was  perceived  to  languish,  they  were  cut,  in  the  hope  that  this 
operation  would  restore  their  vigor,  and  that  the  new  shoots  would  suc 
ceed  better  than  the  original  trees ;  and,  in  fact,  they  seemed  to  be  recover 
ing  for  the  first  few  years.  But  the  shoots  were  soon  attacked  by  the 
same  decay,  and  the  operation  had  to  be  renewed  at  shorter  and  shorter 
intervals,  until  at  last  it  was  found  necessary  to  treat  as  coppices  planta 
tions  originally  designed  for  the  full-growth  system.  Nor  was  this  all : 
the  soil,  periodically  bared  by  these  cuttings,  became  impoverished,  and 
less  and  less  suited  to  the  growth  of  the  oak.  *  *  *  It  was  then  pro 
posed  to  introduce  the  pine  and  plant  with  it  the  vacancies  and  glades. 
*  *  *  By  this  means,  the  forest  was  saved  from  the  ruin  which  threat 
ened  it,  and  now  more  than  10,000  acres  of  pines,  from  fifteen  to  thirty 


FUTAIE,  OR   FULL-GROWTH    SYSTEM.  317 

any  species  cannot  be  grown  in  this  method,  because  trees 
which  shoot  from  decaying  stumps  and  their  dying  roots, 
become  hollow  or  otherwise  unsound  before  they  acquire  their 
full  dimensions.  A  more  fatal  objection  still,  is,  that  the  roots 
of  trees  will  not  bear  more  than  two  or  three,  or  at  most  four 
cuttings  of  their  shoots  before  their  vitality  is  exhausted,  and 
the  wood  can  then  be  restored  only  by  replanting  entirely. 
The  period  of  cutting  coppices  varies  in  Europe  from  fifteen  to 
forty  years,  according  to  soil,  species,  and  rapidity  of  growth. 

In  the  futaie^  or  full-growth  system,  the  trees  are  allowed 
to  stand  as  long  as  they  continue  in  healthy  and  vigorous 
growth.  This  is  a  shorter  period  than  would  be  at  first  sup 
posed,  when  we  consider  the  advanced  age  and  great  dimen 
sions  to  which,  under  favorable  circumstances,  many  forest 
trees  attain  in  temperate  climates.  But,  as  every  observing 
person  familiar  with  the  natural  forest  is  aware,  these  are  ex 
ceptional  cases,  just  as  are  instances  of  great  longevity  or  of 
gigantic  stature  among  men.  Able  vegetable  physiologists 
have  maintained  that  the  tree,  like  most  reptiles,  has  no  nat 
ural  limit  of  life  or  of  growth,  and  that  the  only  reason  why 
our  oaks  and  our  pines  do  not  reach  the  age  of  twenty  cen 
turies  and  the  height  of  a  hundred  fathoms,  is,  that  in  the 
multitude  of  accidents  to  which  they  are  exposed,  the  chances 
of  their  attaining  to  such  a  length  of  years  and  to  such  dimen 
sions  of  growth  are  a  million  to  one  against  them.  But 
another  explanation  of  this  fact  is  possible.  In  trees  affected 
by  no  discoverable  external  cause  of  death,  decay  begins  at  the 
topmost  branches,  which  seem  to  wither  and  die  for  want  of 
nutriment.  The  mysterious  force  by  which  the  sap  is  carried 

years  old,  are  disseminated  at  various  points,  sometimes  intermixed  with 
broad-leaved  trees,  sometimes  forming  groves  by  themselves." — Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,  Mai,  1863,  pp.  153, 154. 

The  forests  of  Denmark,  which,  in  modern  times,  have  been  succeeded 
by  the  beech — a  species  more  inclined  to  be  exclusive  than  any  other 
broad-leaved  tree — were  composed  of  birclies,  oaks,  firs,  aspens,  willows, 
hazel,  and  maple,  the  first  three  being  the  leading  species.  At  present, 
the  beech  greatly  predominates. — YAUPELL,  Bogens  Indvandring,  pp.  19,  20, 


318  FTJTAIE,   OR  FULL-GKOWTH   SYSTEM. 

from  the  roots  to  the  utmost  twigs,  cannot  be  conceived  to  be 
unlimited  in  power,  and  it  is  probable  that  it  differs  in  dif 
ferent  species,  so  that  while  it  may  suffice  to  raise  the  fluid  to 
the  height  of  five  hundred  feet  in  the  sequoia,  it  may  not  be 
able  to  carry  it  beyond  one  hundred  and  fifty  in  the  oak.  The 
limit  may  be  different,  too,  in  different  trees  of  the  same  spe 
cies,  not  from  defective  organization  in  those  of  inferior 
growth,  but  from  more  or  less  favorable  conditions  of  soil, 
nourishment,  and  exposure.  "Whenever  a  tree  attains  to  the 
limit  beyond  which  its  circulating  fluids  cannot  rise,  we  may 
suppose  that  decay  begins,  and  death  follows,  from  the  same 
causes  which  bring  about  the  same  results  in  animals  of  lim 
ited  size — such,  for  example,  as  the  interruption  of  functions 
essential  to  life,  in  consequence  of  the  clogging  up  of  ducts  by 
matter  assimilable  in  the  stage  of  growth,  but  no  longer  so 
when  increment  has  ceased. 

In  the  natural  woods,  we  observe  that,  though,  among  the 
myriads  of  trees  which  grow  upon  a  square  mile,  there  are 
.several  vegetable  giants,  yet  the  great  majority  of  them  begin 
to  decay  long  before  they  have  attained  their  maximum  of 
stature,  and  this  seems  to  be  still  more  emphatically  true  of 
the  artificial  forest.  In  France,  according  to  Clave,  "  oaks,  in 
a  suitable  soil,  may  stand,  without  exhibiting  any  sign  of 
decay,  for  two  or  three  hundred  years ;  the  pines  hardly  ex 
ceed  one  hundred  and  twenty,  and  the  soft  or  white  woods 
\bois  l)lancs\)  in  wet  soils,  languish  and  die  before  reaching  the 
fiftieth  year."  *  These  ages  are  certainly  below  the  average  of 
those  of  American  forest  trees,  and  are  greatly  exceeded  in 
very  numerous  well-attested  instances  of  isolated  trees  in 
Europe. 

The  former  mode  of  treating  the  futaie,  called  the  garden 
system,  was  to  cut  the  trees  individually  as  they  arrived  at 
maturity,  but,  in  the  best  regulated  forests,  this  practice  has 
been  abandoned  for  the  German  method,  which  embraces  not 
only  the  securing  of  the  largest  immediate  profit,  but  the  re- 

*  Etudes  Forestiercs,  p.  89. 


FUTAIE,    OK   FULL-GROWTH    SYSTEM.  319 

planting  of  tlie  forest,  and  the  care  of  the  young  growth.  This 
is  effected  in  the  case  of  a  forest,  whether  natural  or  artificial, 
whicli  is  to  be  subjected  to  regular  management,  by  three 
operations.  The  first  of  these  consists  in  felling  about  one 
third  of  the  wood,  in  such  way  as  to  leave  convenient  spaces 
for  the  growth  of  young  trees.  The  remaining  two-thirds  are 
relied  upon  to  replant  the  vacancies,  by  natural  sowing,  which 
they  seldom  or  never  fail  to  do.  The  seedlings  are  watched, 
are  thinned  out  when  too  dense,  the  ill  formed  and  sickly,  as 
well  as  those  of  inferior  value,  and  the  shrubs  and  thorns 
which  might  otherwise  choke  or  too  closely  shade  them,  are 
pulled  up.  "When  they  have  attained  sufficient  strength  and 
development  of  foliage  to  bear  or  to  require  more  light  and 
air,  the  second  step  is  taken,  by  removing  a  suitable  propor 
tion  of  the  old  trees  wrhich  had  been  spared  at  the  first  cutting ; 
and  when,  finally,  they  are  hardened  enough  to  bear  frost  and 
sun  without  other  protection  than  that  which  they  mutually 
give  to  each  other,  the  remainder  of  the  original  forest  is  felled, 
and  the  wood  now  consists  wholly  of  young  and  vigorous  trees. 
This  result  is  obtained  after  about  twenty  years.  At  con 
venient  periods  afterward,  the  unhealthy  stocks  and  those 
injured  by  wind  or  other  accidents  are  removed,  and  in  some 
instances  the  growth  of  the  remainder  is  promoted  by  irriga- 
ation  or  by  fertilizing  applications.*  When  the  forest  is  ap- 

*  The  grounds  which  it  is  most  important  to  clothe  with  wood  as  a 
conservative  influence,  and  which,  also,  can  best  be  spared  from  agricul 
tural  use,  are  steep  hillsides.  But  the  performance  of  all  the  offices  of  the 
forester  to  the  tree — seeding,  planting,  thinning,  and  finally  felling  and  re 
moving  for  consumption — is  more  laborious  upon  a  rapid  declivity  than  on 
a  level  soil,  and  at  the  same  time  it  is  difficult  to  apply  irrigation  or 
manures  to  trees  so  situated.  Experience  has  shown  that  there  is  great 
advantage  in  terracing  the  face  of  a  hill  before  planting  it,  both  as  pre 
venting  the  wash  of  the  earth  by  checking  the  flow  of  water  down  its 
slope,  and  as  presenting  a  surface  favorable  for  irrigation,  as  well  as  for 
manuring  and  cultivating  the  tree.  But  even  without  so  expensive  a  pro 
cess,  very  important  results  have  been  obtained  by  simply  ditcldng  de 
clivities.  "  In  order  to  hasten  the  growth  of  wood  on  the  flanks  of  a  moun 
tain,  Mr.  Eugene  Chevandier  divided  the  slope  into  zones  forty  or  fifty 


320  FUTAIE,    OK   FULL-GKOWTH    SYSTEM. 

proaching  to  maturity,  the  original  processes  already  described 
are  repeated  ;  and  as,  in  different  parts  of  an  extensive  forest, 

feet  wide,  by  horizontal  ditches  closed  at  both  ends,  and  thereby  obtained, 
from  firs  of  different  ages,  shoots  double  the  dimensions  of  those  which 
grew  on  a  dry  soil  of  the  same  character,  where  the  water  was  allowed  to 
mil  off  without  obstruction." — DUMONT,  DCS  Travaux  Publics,  etc.,  pp. 
94-96. 

The  ditches  were  about  two  feet  and  a  half  deep,  and  three  feet  and  a 
half  wide,  and  they  cost  about  forty  francs  the  hectare,  or  three  dollars  the 
acre.  This  extraordinary  growth  was  produced  wholly  by  the  retention 
of  the  rain  water  in  the  ditches,  whence  it  filtered  through  the  whole  soil 
and  supplied  moisture  to  the  roots  of  the  trees.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  in  a  climate  cold  enough  to  freeze  the  entire  contents  of  the 
ditches  in  winter,  it  would  not  be  expedient  to  draw  off  the  water  in  the 
autumn,  as  the  presence  of  so  large  a  quantity  of  ice  in  the  soil  might  prove 
injurious  to  trees  too  young  and  small  to  shelter  the  ground  effectually 
against  frost. 

Chevandier  computes  that,  if  the  annual  growth  of  the  pine  in  the 
marshy  soil  of  the  Vosges  be  represented  by  one,  it  will  equal  two  in  dry 
ground,  four  or  five  on  slopes  so  ditched  or  graded  as  to  retain  the  water 
flowing  upon  them  from  roads  or  steep  declivities,  and  six  where  the 
earth  is  kept  constantly  moist  by  infiltration  from  running  brooks. — 
Comptcs  IZendus  d  V Academic  des  Sciences — t.  xix,  Juillet,  Dec.,  1844, 
p.  167. 

The  effect  of  accidental  irrigation  is  well  shown  in  the  growth  of  the 
trees  planted  along  the  canals  of  irrigation  which  traverse  the  fields  in 
many  parts  of  Italy.  They  flourish  most  luxuriantly,  in  spite  of  continual 
lopping,  and  yield  a  very  important  contribution  to  the  stock  of  fuel  for 
domestic  use ;  while  trees,  situated  so  far  from  canals  as  to  be  out  of  the 
reach  of  infiltration  from  them,  are  of  much  slower  growth,  under  circum 
stances  otherwise  equally  favorable. 

In  other  experiments  of  Chevandier,  under  better  conditions,  the  yield 
of  wood  was  increased,  by  judicious  irrigation,  in  the  ratio  of  seven  to  one, 
the  profits  in  that  of  twelve  to  one.  At  the  Exposition  of  1855,  Ohambre 
lent  exhibited  young  trees,  which,  in  four  years  from  the  seed,  had  grown 
to  the  height  of  sixteen  and  twenty  feet,  and  the  diameter  of  ten  and 
twelve  inches.  Chevandier  experimented  with  various  manures,  and 
found  that  some  of  them  might  be  profitably  applied  to  young,  but  not 
to  old  trees,  the  quantity  required  in  the  latter  case  being  too  great. 
Wood  ashes  and  the  refuse  of  soda  factories  are  particularly  recommended. 
I  have  seen  an  extraordinary  growth  produced  in  fir  trees  by  the  applica* 
tion  of  soapsuds. 


PROTECTION   AGAINST   ANIMALS.  321 

they  would  take  place  in  different  zones,  it  would  afford  indefi 
nitely  an  annual  crop  of  firewood  and  timber. 

The  duties  of  the  forester  do  not  end  here.  It  sometimes 
happens  that  the  glades  left  by  felling  the  older  trees  are  not 
sufficiently  seeded,  or  that  the  species,  or  essences,  as  the 
French  oddly  call  them,  are  not  duly  proportioned  in  the  new 
crop.  In  this  case,  seed  must  be  artificially  sown,  or  young 
trees  planted  in  the  vacancies. 

One  of  the  most  important  rules  in  the  administration  of 
the  forest  is  the  absolute  exclusion  of  domestic  quadrupeds 
from  every  wood  which  is  not  destined  to  be  cleared.  "No 
growth  of  young  trees  is  possible  where  cattle  are  admitted  to 
pasture  at  any  season  of  the  year,  though  they  are  undoubt 
edly  most  destructive  while  trees  are  in  leaf.* 

*  Although  the  economy  of  the  forest  has  received  little  attention  in 
the  United  States,  no  lover  of  American  nature  can  have  failed  to  observe 
a  marked  difference  between  a  native  wood  from  which  cattle  are  excluded 
and  one  where  they  are  permitted  to  browse.  A  few  seasons  suffice  for 
the  total  extirpation  of  the  "underbrush,"  including  the  young  trees  on 
which  alone  the  reproduction  of  the  forest  depends,  and  all  the  branches 
of  those  of  larger  growth  which  hang  within  reach  of  the  cattle  are 
stripped  of  their  buds  and  leaves,  and  soon  wither  and  fall  off.  These 
effects  are  observable  at  a  great  distance,  and  a  wood  pasture  is  recognized, 
almost  as  far  as  it  can  be  seen,  by  the  regularity  with  which  its  lower 
foliage  terminates  at  what  Ruskin  somewhere  calls  the  "cattle  line."  This 
always  runs  parallel  to  the  surface  of  the  ground,  and  is  determined  by  the 
height  to  which  domestic  quadrupeds  can  reach  to  feed  upon  the  leases. 
In  describing  a  visit,  to  the  grand-ducal  farm  of  San  Kossore  near  Pisa, 
where  a  large  herd  of  camels  is  kept,  Chateauvieux  says :  "  In  passing 
through  a  wood  of  evergreen  oaks,  I  observed  that  all  the  twigs  and 
foliage  of  the  trees  were  clipped  up  to  the  height  of  about  twelve  feet 
above  the  ground,  without  leaving  a  single  spray  below  that  level.  I  was 
informed  that  the  browsing  of  the  camels  had  trimmed  the  trees  as  high 
as  they  could  reach." — LULLIN  DE  CIIATEAUVIEUX,  Lettres  sur  V Italic,  p.  113. 

The  removal  of  the  shelter  afforded  by  the  brushwood  and  the  pendu 
lous  branches  of  trees  permits  drying  and  chilling  winds  to  parch  and  cool 
the  ground,  and  of  course  injuriously  affects  the  growth  of  the  wood.  But 
this  is  not  all.  The  tread  of  quadrupeds  exposes  and  bruises  the  roots  of 
the  trees,  which  often  die  from  this  cause,  as  any  one  may  observe  by  fol 
lowing  the  paths  made  by  cattle  through  woodlands. 
21 


322  REMOVAL   OF    LEAVES. 

It  is  often  necessary  to  take  measures  for  the  protection  of 
young  trees  against  the  rabbit,  the  mole,  and  other  rodent 
quadrupeds,  and  of  older  ones  against  the  damage  done  by  the 
larvae  of  insects  hatched  upon  the  surface  or  in  the  tissues  of 
the  bark,  or  even  in  the  wood  itself.  The  much  greater  lia 
bility  of  the  artificial  tlran  of  the  natural  forest  to  injury  from 
this  cause  is  perhaps  the  only  point  in  which  the  superiority 
of  the  former  to  the  latter  is  not  as  marked  as  that  of  any 
domesticated  vegetable  to  its  wild  representative.  But  the 
better  quality  of  the  wood  and  the  much  more  rapid  growth 
of  the  trained  and  regulated  forest  are  abundant  compensa 
tions  for  the  loss  thus  occasioned,  and  the  progress  of  entomo 
logical  science  will,  perhaps,  suggest  new  methods  of  prevent 
ing  the  ravages  of  insects.  Thus  far,  however,  the  collection 
and  destruction  of  the  eggs,  by  simple  but  expensive  means, 
has  proved  the  only  effectual  remedy.* 

It  is  common  in  Europe  to  permit  the  removal  of  the  fallen 
leaves  and  fragments  of  bark  and  branches  with  which  the 
forest  soil  is  covered,  and  sometimes  the  cutting  of  the  lower 

*  I  have  remarked  elsewhere  that  most  insects  which  deposit  and  hatch 
their  eggs  in  the  wood  of  the  natural  forest  confine  themselves  to  dead 
trees,  Not  only  is  this  the  fact,  hut  it  is  also  true  that  many  of  the  horers 
attack  only  freshly  cut  timber.  Their  season  of  lahor  is  a  short  one.  and 
unless  the  tree  is  cut  during  this  period,  it  is  safe  from  them.  In  summer 
you  may  hear  them  plying  their  augers  in  the  wood  of  a  young  pine  with 
soft  green  hark,  as  you  sit  upon  its  trunk,  within  a  week  after  it  has  heen 
felled,  hut  the  windfalls  of  the  winter  lie  uninjured  hy  the  worm  and  even 
un decayed  for  centuries.  In  the  pine  woods  of  New  England,  after  the 
regular  lumberman  has  removed  the  standing  trees,  these  old  trunks  are 
hauled  out  from  the  mosses  and  leaves  which  half  cover  them,  and  often 
furnish  excellent  timber.  The  slow  decay  of  such  timber  in  the  woods,  it 
may  be  remarked,  furnishes  another  proof  of  the  uniformity  of  temper 
ature  and  humidity  in  the  forest,  for  the  trunk  of  a  tree  lying  on  grass  or 
plough  land,  and  of  course  exposed  to  all  the  alternations  of  climate,  hardly 
resists  complete  decomposition  for  a  generation.  The  forests  of  Europe 
exhibit  similar  facts.  Wessely,  in  a  description  of  the  primitive  wood  of 
Neuwald  in  Lower  Austria,  says  that  the  windfalls  required  from  150  to 
200  years  for  entire  decay. — Die  Oesterreichischen  Alpenldnder  und  ihrt 
Forste,  p.  312. 


REMOVAL  OF   LEAVES.  323 

twigs  of  evergreens.  The  leaves  and  twigs  are  principally 
used  as  litter  for  cattle,  and  finally  as  manure,  the  bark  and 
wind-fallen  branches  as  fuel.  By  long  usage,  sometimes  by 
express  grant,  this  privilege  has  become  a  vested  right  of  the 
population  in  the  neighborhood  of  many  public,  and  even 
large  private  forests  ;  but  it  is  generally  regarded  as  a  serious 
evil.  To  remove  the  leaves  and  fallen  twigs  is  to  withdraw 
much  of  the  pabulum  upon  which  the  tree  was  destined  to 
feed.  The  small  branches  and  leaves  are  the  parts  of  the  tree 
which  yield  the  largest  proportion  of  ashes  on  combustion,  and 
of  course  they  supply  a  great  amount  of  nutriment  for  the 
young  shoots.  "  A  cubic  foot  of  twigs,"  says  Yaupell,  "  yields 
four  times  as  much  ashes  as  a  cubic  foot  of  stem  wood.  *  * 
For  every  hundred  weight  of  dried  leaves  carried  off  from  a 
beech  forest,  we  sacrifice  a  hundred  and  sixty  cubic  feet  of 
wood.  The  leaves  and  the  mosses  are  a  substitute,  not  only 
for  manure,  but  for  ploughing.  The  carbonic  acid  given  out 
by  decaying  leaves,  when  taken  up  by  water,  serves  to  dissolve 
the  mineral  constituents  of  the  soil,  and  is  particularly  active 
in  disintegrating  feldspar  and  the  clay  derived  from  its  decom 
position.  *  *  *  The  leaves  belong  to  the  soil.  Without 
them  it  cannot  preserve  its  fertility,  and  cannot  furnish  nutri 
ment  to  the  beech.  The  trees  languish,  produce  seed  inca 
pable  of  germination,  and  the  spontaneous  self-sowing,  which 
is  an  indispensable  element  in  the  best  systems  of  sylviculture, 
fails  altogether  in  the  bared  and  impoverished  soil."  * 

*  YAUPELL,  Bvyens  Indvandring  i  de  DansJce  Shove,  pp.  29,  46.  Yaupell 
further  observes,  on  the  page  last  quoted  :  "  The  removal  of  leaves  is  in 
jurious  to  the  forest,  not  only  because  it  retards  the  growth  of  trees,  but 
still  more  because  it  disqualifies  the  soil  for  the  production  of  particular 
species.  "When  the  beech  languishes,  and  the  development  of  its  branches 
is  less  vigorous  and  its  crown  less  spreading,  it  becomes  unable  to  resist 
the  encroachments  of  the  fir.  This  latter  tree  thrives  in  an  inferior  soil, 
and  being  no  longer  stifled  by  the  thick  fuliage  of  the  beech,  it  spreads 
gradually  through  the  wood,  while  the  beech  retreats  before  it  and  finally 
perishes." 

The  study  of  the  natural  order  of  succession  in  forest  trees  is  of  the 
ntraost  importance  in  sylviculture,  because  it  guides  us  in  the  selection  of 


324  LOPPING   AND  TRIMMING. 

Besides  these  evils,  the  removal  of  the  leaves  deprives  the 
soil  of  that  spongy  character  which  gives  it  such  immense 
value  as  a  reservoir  of  moisture  and  a  regulator  of  the  flow  of 
springs ;  and,  finally,  it  exposes  the  surface  roots  to  the  drying 
influence  of  sun  and  wind,  to  accidental  mechanical  injury 
from  the  tread  of  animals  or  men,  and,  in  cold  climates,  to  the 
destructive  effects  of  frost. 

The  annual  lopping  and  trimming  of  trees  for  fuel,  so  com 
mon  in  Europe,  is  fatal  to  the  higher  uses  of  the  forest,  but 
where  small  groves  are  made,  or  rows  of  trees  planted,  for  no 
other  purpose  than  to  secure  a  supply  of  firewood,  or  to  serve 

the  species  to  be  employed  in  planting  a  new  or  restoring  a  decayed  forest. 
When  ground  is  laid  bare  both  of  trees  and  of  vegetable  mould,  and  left 
to  the  action  of  unaided  and  unobstructed  nature,  she  first  propagates  trees 
which  germinate  and  grow  only  under  the  influence  of  a  full  supply  of 
light  and  air,  and  then,  in  succession,  other  species,  according  to  their 
ability  to  bear  the  shade  and  their  demand  for  more  abundant  nutriment. 
In  Northern  Europe,  the  larch,  the  white  birch,  the  aspen,  first  appear  ; 
then  follow  the  maple,  the  alder,  the  ash,  the  fir ;  then  the  oak  and  the 
linden ;  and  then  the  beech.  The  trees  called  by  these  respective  names 
in  the  United  States  are  not  specifically  the  same  as  their  European  name 
sakes,  nor  are  they  always  even  the  equivalents  of  these  latter,  and  there 
fore  the  order  of  succession  in  America  would  not  be  precisely  as  indicated 
by  the  foregoing  list,  but  it  nevertheless  very  nearly  corresponds  to  it. 

It  is  thought  important  to  encourage  the  growth  of  the  beech  in  Den 
mark  and  Northern  Germany,  because  it  upon  the  whole  yields  better 
returns  than  other  trees,  and  particularly  because  it  appears  not  to 
exhaust,  but  on  the  contrary  to  enrich  the  soil ;  for  by  shedding  its  leaves 
it  returns  to  it  most  of  the  nutriment  it  has  drawn  from  it,  and  at  the  same 
time  furnishes  a  solvent  which  aids  materially  in  the  decomposition  of  its 
mineral  constituents. 

When  the  forest  is  left  to  itself,  the  order  of  succession  is  constant,  and 
its  occasional  inversion  is  always  explicable  by  some  human  interference. 
It  is  curious  that  the  trees  which  require  most  light  are  content  with  the 
poorest  soils,  and  vice  versa.  The  trees  which  first  appear  are  also  those 
which  propagate  themselves  farthest  to  the  north.  The  birch,  the  larch, 
and  the  fir  bear  a  severer  climate  than  the  oak,  the  oak  than  the  beech. 
u  These  parallelisms,"  says  Vaupell,  *'  are  very  interesting,  because  they 
are  entirely  independent  of  each  other,"  and  each  prescribes  the  Bame 
order  of  succession. — Bogens  Indvandring,  p.  42. 


CATTLE   AND   THE   FOREST.  325 

as  supports  for  the  Tine,  it  is  often  very  advantageous.  The 
willows,  and  many  other  trees,  bear  polling  for  a  long  series 
of  years  without  apparent  diminution  of  growth  of  branches, 
and  though  certainly  a  polled,  or,  to  use  an  old  English  word, 
a  doddered  tree,  is  in  general  a  melancholy  object,  yet  it  must 
be  admitted  that  the  aspect  of  some  species — the  American 
locust,  Rdbinia  pseudacacia,  for  instance — when  young,  is 
improved  by  this  process.* 

I  have  spoken  of  the  needs  of  agriculture  as  a  principal 
cause  of  the  destruction  of  the  forest,  and  of  domestic  cattle  as 
particularly  injurious  to  the  growth  of  young  trees.  But  these 
animals  affect  the  forest,  indirectly,  in  a  still  more  important 
way,  because  the  extent  of  cleared  ground  required  for  agri 
cultural  use  depends  very  much  on  the  number  and  kinds  of 
the  cattle  bred.  We  have  seen,  in  a  former  chapter,  that,  in 
the  United  States,  the  domestic  quadrupeds  amount  to  more 
than  a  hundred  millions,  or  three  times  the  number  of  the 
human  population  of  the  Union.  In  many  of  the  Western 
States,  the  swine  subsist  more  or  less  on  acorns,  nuts,  and 
other  products  of  the  wToods,  and  the  prairies,  or  natural  mead 
ows  of  the  Mississippi  valley,  yield  a  large  amount  of  food  for 
beast,  as  well  as  for  man.  With  these  exceptions,  all  this  vast 
army  of  quadrupeds  is  fed  wholly  on  grass,  grain,  pulse,  and 
roots  grown  on  soil  reclaimed  from  the  forest  by  European 
settlers.  It  is  true  that  the  flesh  of  domestic  quadrupeds 
enters  very  largely  into  the  aliment  of  the  American  people, 
and  greatly  reduces  the  quantity  of  vegetable  nutriment  which 
they  would  otherwise  consume,  so  that  a  smaller  amount  of 
agricultural  product  is  required  for  immediate  human  food, 
and,  of  course,  a  smaller  extent  of  cleared  land  is  needed  for 
the  growth  of  that  product,  than  if  no  domestic  animals  ex 
isted.  But  the  flesh  of  the  horse,  the  ass,  and  the  mule  is  not 

*  When  vigorous  young  locusts,  of  two  or  three  inches  in  diameter,  are 
polled,  they  throw  out  a  great  number  of  very  thick-leaved  shoots,  which 
arrange  themselves  in  a  globular  head,  so  unlike  the  natural  crown  of  the 
acacia,  that  persons  familiar  only  with  the  untrained  tree  often  take  them 
for  a  different  species. 


326  CATTLE  AND  THE  FOKEST. 

consumed  by  man,  and  the  sheep  is  reared  rather  for  its  fleece 
than  for  food.  Besides  this,  the  ground  required  to  produce 
the  grass  and  grain  consumed  in  rearing  and  fattening  a  graz 
ing  quadruped,  would  yield  a  far  larger  amount  of  nutriment, 
if  devoted  to  the  growing  of  breadstuffs,  than  is  furnished  by 
his  flesh ;  and,  upon  the  whole,  whatever  advantages  may  be 
reaped  from  the  breeding  of  domestic  cattle,  it  is  plain  that 
the  cleared  land  devoted  to  their  sustenance  in  the  originally 
wooded  part  of  the  United  States,  after  deducting  a  quantity 
sufficient  to  produce  an  amount  of  aliment  equal  to  their  flesh, 
still  greatly  exceeds  that  cultivated  for  vegetables,  directly 
consumed  by  the  people  of  the  same  regions  ;  or,  to  express  a 
nearly  equivalent  idea  in  other  words,  the  meadow  and  the 
pasture,  taken  together,  much  exceed  the  plough  land.* 

In  fertile  countries,  like  the  United  States,  the  foreign 
demand  for  animal  and  vegetable  aliment,  for  cotton,  and  for 
tobacco,  much  enlarges  the  sphere  of  agricultural  operations, 
and,  of  course,  prompts  further  encroachments  upon  the  forest. 
The  commerce  in  these  articles,  therefore,  constitutes  in  Amer 
ica  a  special  cause  of  the  destruction  of  the  woods,  which  does 
not  exist  in  the  numerous  states  of  the  Old  World  that  derive 
the  raw  material  of  their  mechanical  industry  from  distant 
lands,  and  import  many  articles  of  vegetable  food  or  luxury 
which  their  own  climates  cannot  advantageously  produce. 

*  The  two  ideas  expressed  in  the  test  are  not  exactly  equivalent, 
because,  though  the  consumption  of  animal  food  diminishes  the  amount  of 
vegetable  aliment  required  for  human  use,  yet  the  animals  themselves  con 
sume  a  great  quantity  of  grain  and  roots  grown  on  ground  ploughed  and 
cultivated  as  regularly  and  as  laboriously  as  any  other. 

The  170,000,000  bushels  of  oats  raised  in  the  United  States  in  1860, 
and  fed  to  the  6,000,000  horses,  the  potatoes,  the  turnips,  and  the  maize 
employed  in  fattening  the  oxen,  the  sheep,  and  the  swine  slaughtered 
the  same  year,  occupied  an  extent  of  ground  which,  cultivated  by  hand 
labor  and  with  Chinese  industry  and  skill,  would  probably  have  produced 
a  quantity  of  vegetable  food  equal  in  alimentary  power  to  the  flesh  of  the 
quadrupeds  killed  for  domestic  use.  Hence,  so  far  as  the  naked  question  of 
amount  of  aliment  is  concerned,  the  meadows  and  the  pastures  might  as 
well  have  remained  in  the  forest  condition. 


DUTY   OF   PRESERVING    THE   FOREST.  327 

The  growth  of  arboreal  vegetation  is  so  slow  that,  though 
he  who  buries  an  acorn  may  hope  to  see  it  shoot  up  to  a  min 
iature  resemblance  of  the  majestic  tree  which  shall  shade  his 
remote  descendants,  yet  the  longest  life  hardly  embraces  the 
seedtime  and  the  harvest  of  a  forest.  The  planter  of  a  wood 
must  be  actuated  by  higher  motives  than  those  of  an  invest 
ment  the  profits  of  which  consist  in  direct  pecuniary  gain  to 
himself  or  even  to  his  posterity ;  for  if,  in  rare  cases,  an  arti 
ficial  forest  may,  ia  two  or  three  generations,  more  than  repay 
its  original  cost,  still,  in  general,  the  value  of  its  timber  will  not 
return  the  capital  expended  and  the  interest  accrued.*  But 
when  we  consider  the  immense  collateral  advantages  derived 
from  the  presence,  the  terrible  evils  necessarily  resulting  from 
the  destruction  of  the  forest,  both  the  preservation  of  existing 
woods,  and  the  far  more  costly  extension  of  them  where  they 
have  been  unduly  reduced,  are  among  the  most  obvious  of  the 
duties  which  this  age  owes  to  those  that  are  to  come  after  it. 
Especially  is  this  obligation  incumbent  upon  Americans.  No 
civilized  people  profits  so  largely  from  the  toils  and  sacrifices 
of  its  immediate  predecessors  as  they ;  no  generations  have 

*  According  to  Clave  (Etudes,  p.  159),  the  net  revenue  from  the  forests 
of  the  state  in  France,  making  no  allowance  for  interest  on  the  capital 
represented  by  the  forest,  is  two  dollars  per  acre.  In  Saxony  it  is  about 
the  same,  though  the  cost  of  administration  is  twice  as  much  as  in  France ; 
in  Wiirtemberg  it  is  about  a  dollar  an  acre  ;  and  in  Prussia,  where  half  the 
income  is  consumed  in  the  expenses  of  administration,  it  sinks  to  less  than 
half  a  dollar.  This  low  rate  in  Prussia  is  partly  explained  by  the  fact  that 
a  considerable  proportion  of  the  annual  product  of  wood  is  either  conceded 
to  persons  claiming  prescriptive  rights,  or  sold,  at  a  very  small  price,  to 
the  poor.  Taking  into  account  the  capital  invested  in  forest  land,  and 
adding  interest  upon  it,  Pressler  calculates  that  a  pine  wood,  managed  with 
a  view  to  felling  it  when  eighty  years  old,  would  yield  only  one  eighth  of 
one  per  cent,  annual  profit ;  a  fir  wood,  at  one  hundred  years,  one  sixth  of 
one  per  cent. ;  a  beech  wood,  at  one  hundred  and  twenty  years,  one  fourth 
of  one  per  cent.  The  same  author  (p.  335)  gives  the  net  income  of  the 
New  forest  in  England,  over  and  above  expenses,  interest  not  computed,  at 
twenty-five  cents  per  acre  only.  In  America,  where  no  expense  is  be 
stowed  upon  the  woods3  the  annual  growth  would  generally  be  estimated 
much  higher. 


328  INSTABILITY   OF   AMERICAN   LIFE. 

ever  sown  so  liberally,  and,  in  their  own  persons,  reaped  so 
scanty  a  return,  as  the  pioneers  of  Anglo-American  social  life. 
We  can  repay  our  debt  to  our  noble  forefathers  only  by  a  like 
magnanimity,  by  a  like  self-forgetting  care  for  the  moral  and 
material  interests  of  our  own  posterity. 

Instability  of  American  Life. 

All  human  institutions,  associate  arrangements,  modes  of 
life,  have  their  characteristic  imperfections.  The  natural,  per 
haps  the  necessary  defect  of  ours,  is  their  instability,  their 
want  of  fixedness,  not  in  form  only,  but  even  in  spirit.  The 
face  of  physical  nature  in  the  United  States  shares  this  inces 
sant  fluctuation,  and  the  landscape  is  as  variable  as  the  habits 
of  the  population.  It  is  time  for  some  abatement  in  the  rest 
less  love  of  change  which  characterizes  us,  and  makes  us  al 
most  a  nomade  rather  than  a  sedentary  people.*  We  have  now 
felled  forest  enough  everywhere,  in  many  districts  far  too  much. 
Let  us  restore  this  one  element  of  material  life  to  its  normal 

*  It  is  rare  that  a  middle-aged  American  dies  in  the  house  where  he 
was  born,  or  an  old  man  even  in  that  which  he  has  built ;  and  this  is 
scarcely  less  true  of  the  rural  districts,  where  every  man  owns  his  habit 
ation,  than  of  the  city,  where  the  majority  live  in  hired  houses.  This  life 
of  incessant  flitting  is  unfavorable  for  the  execution  of  permanent  improve 
ments  of  every  sort,  and  especially  of  those  which,  like  the  forest,  are 
slow  in  repaying  any  part  of  the  capital  expended  in  them.  It  requires  a 
very  generous  spirit  in  a  landholder  to  plant  a  wood  on  a  farm  he  expects 
to  sell,  or  which  he  knows  will  pass  out  of  the  hands  of  his  descendants 
at  his  death.  But  the  very  fact  of  having  begun  a  plantation  would  attach 
the  proprietor  more  strongly  to  the  soil  for  which  he  had  made  such  a 
sacrifice ;  and  the  paternal  acres  would  have  a  greater  value  in  the  eyes  of 
a  succeeding  generation,  if  thus  improved  and  beautified  by  the  labors  of 
those  from  whom  they  were  inherited.  Landed  property,  therefore,  the 
transfer  of  which  is  happily  free  from  every  legal  impediment  or  restric 
tion  in  the  United  States,  would  find,  in  the  feelings  thus  prompted,  a 
moral  check  against  a  too  frequent  change  of  owners,  and  would  tend  to 
remain  long  enough  in  one  proprietor  or  one  family  to  admit  of  gradual 
improvements  which  would  increase  its  value  both  to  the  possessor  and  to 
the  state. 


INSTABILITY   OF   AMERICAN   LITE.  329 

proportions,  and  devise  means  for  maintaining  the  permanence 
of  its  relations  to  the  fields,  the  meadows,  and  the  pastures,  to 
the  rain  and  the  dews  of  heaven,  to  the  springs  and  rivulets 
with  which  it  waters  the  earth.  The  establishment  of  an  ap 
proximately  fixed  ratio  between  the  two  most  broadly  charac 
terized  distinctions  of  rural  surface — woodland  and  plough  land 
—would  involve  a  certain  persistence  of  character  in  all  the 
branches  of  industry,  all  the  occupations  and  habits  of  life, 
which  depend  upon  or  are  immediately  connected  with  either, 
without  implying  a  rigidity  that  should  exclude  flexibility  of 
accommodation  to  the  many  changes  of  external  circumstance 
which  human  wisdom  can  neither  prevent  nor  foresee,  and 
would  thus  help  us  to  become,  more  emphatically,  a  well- 
ordered  and  stable  commonwealth,  and,  not  less  conspicuously, 
a  people  of  progress. 

\ 

NOTE  on  word  watershed,  omitted  on  p.  257. — Sir  John  F.  W.  Herscliel 
(Physical  Geography,  137,  and  elsewhere)  spells  this  word  water-sched,  be 
cause  he  considers  it  a  translation,  or  rather  an  adoption  of  the  German 
"  Wasser-scheide,  separation  of  the  waters,  not  \\aiQV-shcd,  the  slope  down 
which  the  waters  run."  As  a  point  of  historical  etymology,  it  is  probable 
that  the  word  in  question  was  suggested  to  those  who  first  used  it  by  the 
German  Wasserschcide  ;  but  the  spelling  water-scJied,  proposed  by  Herschel, 
is  objectionable,  both  because  sch  is  a  combination  of  letters  wholly  un 
known  to  modern  English  orthography  and  properly  representing  no  sound 
recognized  in  English  orthoepy,  and  for  the  still  better  reason  that  water 
shed,  in  the  sense  of  division-of-the-icatcrs,  has  a  legitimate  English  ety 
mology. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  sceadan  meant  both  to  separate  or  divide,  and  to  shade 
or  shelter.  It  is  the  root  of  the  English  verbs  to  shed  and  to  shade,  and  in 
the  former  meaning  is  the  A.  S.  equivalent  of  the  German  verb  scheiden. 

Shed  in  Old  English  had  the  meaning  to  separate  or  distinguish.  It  is 
so  used  in  the  Owl  and  the  Nightingale,  v.  197.  Palsgrave  (Lesdarcisse- 
ment,  etc.,  p.  717)  defines  I  shcde,  I  departe  thinges  asonder ;  and  the  word 
still  menns  to  divide  in  several  English  local  dialects.  Hence,  watershed, 
the  division  or  separation  of  the  waters,  is  good  English  both  in  sense  and 
spelling. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  WATERS. 

LAND  ARTIFICIALLY  WON  FROM  THE  WATERS  :  «,  EXCLUSION  OF  THE  SEA  BY 
DIKING ;  6,  DRAINING  OF  LAKES  AND  MARSHES  ;  C,  GEOGRAPHICAL  INFLU 
ENCE  OF  SUCH  OPERATIONS — LOWERING  OF  LAKES — MOUNTAIN  LAKES — CLI 
MATIC  EFFECTS  OF  DRAINING  LAKES  AND  MARSHES — GEOGRAPHICAL  AND 
CLIMATIC  EFFECTS  OF  AQUEDUCTS,  RESERVOIRS,  AND  CANALS — SURFACE  AND 
UNDERDRAINING,  AND  THEIR  CLIMATIC  AND  GEOGRAPHICAL  EFFECTS — IRRI 
GATION  AND  ITS  CLIMATIC  AND  GEOGRAPHICAL  EFFECTS. 

INUNDATIONS  AND  TORRENTS  :  «,  RIVER  EMBANKMENTS  ;  6,  FLOODS  OF 
THE  ARDECHE  ;  C,  CRUSHING  FORCE  OF  TORRENTS  ;  C?,  INUNDATIONS  OF  1856 
IN  FRANCE  ;  0,  REMEDIES  AGAINST  INUNDATIONS  —  CONSEQUENCES  IF  THE 
NILE  HAD  BEEN  CONFINED  BY  LATERAL  DIKES. 

IMPROVEMENTS  IN  THE  VAL  DI  CHIANA — IMPROVEMENTS  IN  THE  TUSCAN 
MAJIEMME — OBSTRUCTION  OF  RIVER  MOUTHS — SUBTERRANEAN  WATERS — AR 
TESIAN  WELLS — ARTIFICIAL  SPRINGS — ECONOMIZING  PRECIPITATION. 

Land  artificially  won  from  the  Waters. 

MAN,  as  we  have  seen,  has  done  much  to  revolutionize  the 
Bolid  surface  of  the  globe,  and  to  change  the  distribution  and 
proportions,  if  not  the  essential  character,  of  the  organisms 
which  inhabit  the  land  and  even  the  waters.  Besides  the  in 
fluence  thus  exerted  upon  the  life  which  peoples  the  sea,  his 
action  upon  the  land  has  involved  a  certain  amount  of  indirect 
encroachment  upon  the  territorial  jurisdiction  of  the  ocean. 
So  far  as  he  has  increased  the  erosion  of  running  waters  by  the 
destruction  of  the  forest,  he  has  promoted  the  deposit  of  solid 
matter  in  the  sea,  thus  reducing  its  depth,  advancing  the  coast 
line,  and  diminishing  the  area  covered  by  the  waters.  He  has 
gone  beyond  this,  and  invaded  the  realm  of  the  ocean  by  con- 


NATUEAL   CHANGE   OF   COAST   LINE.  331 

structing  within  its  borders  wharves,  piers,  lighthouses,  break 
waters,  fortresses,  and  other  facilities  for  his  commercial  and 
military  operations;  and  in  some  countries  he  has  permanently 
rescued  from  tidal  overflow,  and  even  from  the  very  bed  of 
the  deep,  tracts  of  ground  extensive  enough  to  constitute  val 
uable  additions  to  his  agricultural  domain.  The  quantity  of 
soil  gained  from  the  sea  by  these  different  modes  of  acquisition 
is,  indeed,  too  inconsiderable  to  form  an  appreciable  element 
in  the  comparison  of  the  general  proportion  between  the  two 
great  forms  of  terrestrial  surface,  land  and  water ;  but  the 
results  of  such  operations,  considered  in  their  physical  and 
their  moral  bearings,  are  sufficiently  important  to  entitle  them 
to  special  notice  in  every  comprehensive  view  of  the  relations 
between  man  and  nature. 

There  are  cases,  as  on  the  western  shores  of  the  Baltic, 
where,  in  consequence  of  the  secular  elevation  of  the  coast,  the 
sea  appears  to  be  retiring  ;  others,  where,  from  the  slow  sink 
ing  of  the  land,  it  seems  to  be  advancing.  These  movements 
depend  upon  geological  causes  wholly  out  of  our  reach,  and 
man  can  neither  advance  nor  retard  them.  There  are  also 
cases  where  similar  apparent  effects  are  produced  by  local 
oceanic  currents,  by  river  deposit  or  erosion,  by  tidal  action,  or 
by  the  influence  of  the  wind  upon  the  waves  and  the  sands  of 
the  sea  beach.  A  regular  current  may  drift  suspended  earth 
and  seaweed  along  a  coast  until  they  are  caught  by  an  eddy 
and  finally  deposited  out  of  the  reach  of  further  disturbance, 
or  it  may  scoop  out  the  bed  of  the  sea  and  undermine  promon 
tories  and  headlands ;  a  powerful  river,  as  the  wind  changes 
the  direction  of  its  flow  at  its  outlet,  may  wash  away  shores 
and  sandbanks  at  one  point  to  deposit  their  material  at  an 
other  ;  the  tide  or  waves,  stirred  to  unusual  depths  by  the 
wind,  may  gradually  wear  down  the  line  of  coast,  or  they 
may  form  shoals  and  coast  dunes  by  depositing  the  sand  they 
have  rolled  up  from  the  bottom  of  the  ocean.  These  latter 
modes  of  action  are  slow  in  producing  effects  sufficiently  im 
portant  to  be  noticed  in  general  geography,  or  even  to  be 
visible  in  the  representations  of  coast  line  laid  down  in  ordi- 


332  HARBOR   AND   COAST   IMPROVEMENTS. 

nary  maps  ;  but  they  nevertheless  form  conspicuous  features 
in  local  topography,  and  they  are  attended  with  consequences 
of  great  moment  to  the  material  and  the  moral  interests  of 
men. 

The  forces  which  produce  these  results  are  all  in  a  consid 
erable  degree  subject  to  control,  or  rather  to  direction  and 
resistance,  by  human  power,  and  it  is  in  guiding  and  combat 
ing  them  that  man  has  achieved  some  of  his  most  remarkable 
and  honorable  conquests  over  nature.  The  triumphs  in  ques 
tion,  or  what  we  generally  call  harbor  and  coast  improve 
ments,  whether  wre  estimate  their  value  by  the  money  and 
labor  expended  upon  them,  or  by  their  bearing  upon  the  inter 
ests  of  commerce  and  the  arts  of  civilization,  must  take  a  very 
high  rank  among  the  great  works  of  man,  and  they  are  fast 
assuming  a  magnitude  greatly  exceeding  their  former  relative 
importance.  The  extension  of  commerce  and  of  the  military 
marine,  and  especially  the  introduction  of  vessels  of  increased 
burden  and  deeper  draught  of  water,  have  imposed  upon  en 
gineers  tasks  of  a  character  which  a  century  ago  would  have 
been  pronounced,  and,  in  fact,  would  have  been  impracticable  ; 
but  necessity  has  stimulated  an  ingenuity  which  has  contrived 
means  of  executing  them,  and  which  gives  promise  of  yet 
greater  performance  in  time  to  come. 

Men  have  ceased  to  admire  the  power  which  heaped  up  the 
great  pyramid  to  gratify  the  pride  of  a  despot  with  a  giant 
sepulchre ;  for  many  great  harbors,  many  important  lines  of 
internal  communication,  in  the  civilized  world,  now  exhibit 
works  which  surpass  the  vastest  remains  of  ancient  architec 
tural  art  in  mass  and  weight  of  matter,  demand  the  exercise 
of  far  greater  constructive  skill,  and  involve  a  much  heavier 
pecuniary  expenditure  than  would  now  be  required  for  the 
building  of  the  tomb  of  Cheops.  It  is  computed  that  the  great 
pyramid,  the  solid  contents  of  which  when  complete  were  about 
3,000,000  cubic  yards,  could  be  erected  for  a  million  of  pounds 
sterling.  The  breakwater  at  Cherbourg,  founded  in  rough  water 
sixty  feet  deep,  at  an  average  distance  of  more  than  two  miles 
from  the  shore,  contains  double  the  mass  of  the  pyramid,  and 


COAST   DIKES.  333 

many  a  comparatively  unimportant  railroad  lias  been  con 
structed  at  twice  the  cost  which  would  now  build  that  stupen 
dous  monument.  Indeed,  although  man,  detached  from  the 
solid  earth,  is  almost  powerless  to  struggle  against  the  sea,  he 
is  fast  becoming  invincible  by  it  so  long  as  his  foot  is  planted 
on  the  shore,  or  even  on  the  bottom  of  the  rolling  ocean  ;  and 
though  on  some  battle  fields  between  the  waters  and  the  land, 
he  is  obliged  slowly  to  yield  his  ground,  yet  he  retreats  still 
facing  the  foe,  and  will  finally  be  able  to  say  to  the  sea : 
"  Thus  far  shalt  thou  come  and  no  farther,  and  here  shall  thy 
proud  waves  be  stayed  !  " 

The  description  of  works  of  harbor  and  coast  improvement 
which  have  only  an  economical  value,  not  a  true  geographical 
importance,  does  not  come  within  the  plan  of  the  present 
volume,  and  in  treating  this  branch  of  my  subject,  I  shall 
confine  myself  to  such  as  are  designed  either  to  gain  new  soil 
by  excluding  the  waters  from  grounds  which  they  had  perma 
nently  or  occasionally  covered,  or  to  resist  new  encroachments 
of  the  sea  upon  the  land. 

a.  Exclusion  of  the  Sea  ~by  Diking. 
The  draining  of  the  Lincolnshire  fens  in  England,  which 

o  O  7 

converted  about  400,000  acres  of  marsh,  pool,  and  tide-washed 
flat  into  plough  land  and  pasturage,  is  a  work,  or  rather  series 
of  works,  of  great  magnitude,  and  it  possesses  much  econom 
ical,  and,  indeed,  no  trifling  geographical  importance.  Its 
plans  and  methods  were,  at  least  in  part,  borrowed  from  the 
example  of  like  improvements  in  Holland,  and  it  is,  in  diffi 
culty  and  extent,  inferior  to  works  executed  for  the  same  pur 
pose  on  the  opposite  coast  of  the  North  Sea,  by  Dutch,  Frisic, 
and  Low  German  engineers.  The  space  I  can  devote  to  such 
operations  will  be  better  employed  in  describing  the  latter, 
and  I  content  myself  with  the  simple  statement  I  have  already 
made  of  the  quantity  of  worthless  and  even  pestilential  land 
which  has  been  rendered  both  productive  and  salubrious  in 
Lincolnshire,  by  diking  out  the  sea,  and  the  rivers  which  trav 
erse  the  fens  of  that  country. 


334:  INUNDATIONS   IN   THE  NETHERLANDS. 

The  almost  continued  prevalence  of  west  winds  upon  both 
coasts  of  the  German  Ocean  occasions  a  constant  set  of  the 
currents  of  that  sea  to  the  east,  and  both  for  this  reason  and 
on  account  of  the  greater  violence  of  storms  from  the  former 
quarter,  the  English  shores  are  much  less  exposed  to  invasion 
by  the  waves  than  those  of  the  Netherlands  and  the  provinces 
contiguous  to  them  on  the  north.  The  old  Netherlandish 
chronicles  are  filled  with  the  most  startling  accounts  of  the 
damage  done  by  the  irruptions  of  the  ocean,  from  west  winds 
or  extraordinarily  high  tides,  at  times  long  before  any  consid 
erable  extent  of  seacoast  was  diked.  Several  hundreds  of  these 
terrible  inundations  are  recorded,  and  in  very  many  of  them 
the  loss  of  human  lives  is  estimated  as  high  as  one  hundred 
thousand.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  there  must  be  enor 
mous  exaggeration  in  these  numbers  ;  for,  with  all  the  reckless 
hardihood  shown  by  men  in  braving  the  dangers  and  priva 
tions  attached  by  nature  to  their  birthplace,  it  is  inconceivable 
that  so  dense  a  population  as  such  wholesale  destruction  of  life 
supposes  could  find  the  means  of  subsistence,  or  content  itself 
to  dwell,  on  a  territory  liable,  a  dozen  times  in  a  century,  to 
such  fearful  devastation.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however, 
that  the  low  continental  shores  of  the  German  Ocean  very  fre 
quently  suffered  immense  injury  from  inundation  by  the  sea, 
and  it  is  natural,  therefore,  that  the  various  arts  of  resistance 
to  the  encroachments  of  the  ocean,  and,  finally,  of  aggressive 
warfare  iipon  its  domain,  and  of  permanent  conquest  of  its 
territory,  should  have  been  earlier  studied  and  carried  to 
higher  perfection  in  the  latter  countries,  than  in  England, 
which  had  much  less  to  lose  or  to  gain  by  the  incursions  or  the 
retreat  of  the  waters. 

Indeed,  although  the  confinement  of  swelling  rivers  by 
artificial  embankments  is  of  great  antiquity,  I  do  not  know 
that  the  defence  or  acquisition  of  land  from  the  sea  by  diking 
was  ever  practised  on  a  large  scale  until  systematically  under- 
taken  by  the  Netherlander,  a  few  centuries  after  the  com 
mencement  of  the  Christian  era.  The  silence  of  the  Roman 
historians  affords  a  strong  presumption  that  this  art  was  un- 


DIKES    OF   THE   NETHERLANDS.  335 

known  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  Netherlands  at  the  time  of  the 
Roman  invasion,  and  the  elder  Pliny's  description  of  the  mode 
of  life  along  the  coast  which  has  now  been  long  diked  in, 
applies  precisely  to  the  habits  of  the  people  who  live  on  the 
low  islands  and  mainland  flats  lying  outside  of  the  chain  of 
dikes,  and  wholly  unprotected  by  embankments  of  any  sort. 

It  has  been  conjectured,  and  not  without  probability,  that 
the  causeways  built  by  the  Romans  across  the  marshes  of  the 
Low  Countries,  in  their  campaigns  against  the  Germanic  tribes, 
gave  the  natives  the  first  hint  of  the  utility  which  might  be 
derived  from  similar  constructions  applied  to  a  different  pur 
pose.*  If  this  is  so,  it  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  among 
the  many  instances  in  which  the  arts  and  enginery  of  war  have 
been  so  modified  as  to  be  eminently  promotive  of  the  blessings 
of  peace,  thereby  in  some  measure  compensating  the  wrongs 
and  sufferings  they  have  inflicted  on  humanity.-)-  The  Low- 

*  It  has  been  often  asserted  by  eminent  writers  that  a  part  of  the  fens 
in  Lincolnshire  was  reclaimed  by  sea  dikes  under  the  government  of  the 
Romans.  I  have  found  no  ancient  authority  in  support  of  this  allegation, 
nor  can  I  refer  to  any  passage  in  Roman  literature  in  which  sea  dikes  are 
expressly  mentioned  otherwise  than  as  walls  or  piers,  except  that  in  Pliny 
(Hist.  Nat.  xxxvi,  24),  where  it  is  said  that  the  Tyrrhenian  sea  was  excluded 
from  the  Lucrine  lake  by  dikes. 

t  A  friend  has  recently  suggested  to  me  an  interesting  illustration  of 
the  applicability  of  military  instrumentalities  to  pacific  art.  The  sale  of 
gunpowder  in  the  United  States,  he  informs  me,  is  smaller  since  the  com 
mencement  of  the  present  rebellion  than  before,  because  the  war  has 
caused  the  suspension  of  many  public  and  private  improvements,  in  the 
execution  of  which  great  quantities  of  powder  were  used  for  blasting. 

It  is  alleged  that  the  same  observation  was  made  in  France  during  the 
Crimean  war,  and  that,  in  general,  not  ten  per  cent,  of  the  powder  manu 
factured  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic  is  employed  for  military  purposes. 

It  is  a  fact  not  creditable  to  the  moral  sense  of  modern  civilization,  that 
very  many  of  the  most  important  improvements  in  machinery  and  the 
working  of  metals  have  originated  in  the  necessities  of  war,  and  that 
man's  highest  ingenuity  has  been  shown,  and  many  of  his  most  remarkable 
triumphs  over  natural  forces  achieved,  in  the  contrivance  of  engines  for 
the  destruction  of  his  fellow  man.  The  military  material  employed  by  the 
first  Napoleon  has  become,  in  less  than  two  generations,  nearly  as  obsolete 
as  the  sling  and  stone  of  the  shepherd,  and  attack  and  defence  now  begin 


336  LAND  GAINED   BY   DIKING. 

landers  are  believed  to  have  secured  some  coast  and  bay  islands 
by  ring  dikes,  and  to  have  embanked  some  fresh  water  chan 
nels,  as  early  as  the  eighth  or  ninth  century ;  but  it  does  not 
appear  that  sea  dikes,  important  enough  to  be  noticed  in  histor 
ical  records,  were  constructed  on  the  mainland  before  the  thir 
teenth  century.  The  practice  of  draining  inland  accumulation 
of  water,  whether  fresh  or  salt,  for  the  purpose  of  bringing 
under  cultivation  the  ground  they  cover,  is  of  later  origin,  and 
is  said  not  to  have  been  adopted  until  after  the  middle  of  the 
fifteenth  century.* 

The  total  amount  of  surface  gained  to  the  agriculture  of 
the  Netherlands  by  diking  out  the  sea  and  by  draining  shallow 
bays  and  lakes,  is  estimated  by  Staring  at  three  hundred  and 
fifty-five  thousand  bunder  or  hectares,  equal  to  eight  hundred 
and  seventy-seven  thousand  two  hundred  and  forty  acres, 
which  is  one  tenth  of  the  area  of  the  kingdom.-)-  In  very  many 
instances,  the  dikes  have  been  partially,  in  some  particularly 
exposed  localities  totally  destroyed  by  the  violence  of  the  sea, 
and  the  drained  lands  again  flooded.  In  some  cases,  the  soil 
thus  painfully  won  from  the  ocean  has  been  entirely  lost ;  in 
others  it  has  been  recovered  by  repairing  or  rebuilding  the 
dikes  and  pumping  out  the  water.  Besides  this,  the  weight 

at  distances  to  which,  half  a  century  ago,  military  reconnoissances  hardly 
extended.  Upon  a  partial  view  of  the  subject,  the  human  race  seems  des 
tined  to  hecome  its  own  executioner — on  the  one  hand,  exhausting  the  ca 
pacity  of  the  earth  to  furnish  sustenance  to  her  taskmaster ;  on  the  other, 
compensating  diminished  production  by  inventing  more  efficient  methods 
of  exterminating  the  consumer. 

But  war  develops  great  civil  virtues,  and  brings  into  action  a  degree 
and  kind  of  physical  energy  which  seldom  fails  to  awaken  a  new  intellect 
ual  life  in  a  people  that  achieves  great  moral  and  political  results  through 
great  heroism  and  endurance  and  perseverance.  Domestic  corruption  has 
destroyed  more  nations  than  foreign  invasion,  and  a  people  is  rarely  con 
quered  till  it  has  deserved  subjugation. 

*  STAKING-,  Voormaals  en  Thans,  p.  150. 

t  Idem,  p.  163.  Much  the  largest  proportion  of  the  lands  so  reclaimed, 
though  for  the  most  part  lying  above  low-water  tidemark,  are  at  a  lower 
level  than  the  Lincolnshire  fens,  and  more  subject  to  inundation  from  the 
irruptions  of  the  sea. 


LOSS    OF   LAND   IN   THE   NETHEKLANDS.  337 

of  the  dikes  gradually  sinks  them  into  the  soft  soil  beneath, 
and  this  loss  of  elevation  must  be  compensated  by  raising  the 
surface,  while  the  increased  burden  thus  added  tends  to  sink 
them  still  lower.  "Tetens  declares,"  says  Kohl,  "  that  in  some 
places  the  dikes  have  gradually  sunk  to  the  depth  of  sixty  or 
even  a  hundred  feet."  *  For  these  reasons,  the  processes  of 
dike  building  have  been  almost  everywhere  again  and  again 
repeated,  and  thus  the  total  expenditure  of  money  and  of  labor 
upon  the  works  in  question  is  much  greater  than  would  appear 
from  an  estimate  of  the  actual  cost  of  diking-in  a  given  extent 
of  coast  land  and  draining  a  given  area  of  water  surface.-)- 

On  the  other  hand,  by  erosion  of  the  coast  line,  the  drifting 
of  sand  dunes  into  the  interior,  and  the  drowning  of  fens  and 
morasses  by  incursions  of  the  sea — all  caused,  or  at  least 
greatly  aggravated,  by  human  improvidence — the  Netherlands 
have  lost  a  far  larger  area  of  land  since  the  commencement  of 
the  Christian  era  than  they  have  gained  by  diking  and  drain 
ing.  Staring  despairs  of  the  possibility  of  calculating  the  loss 
from  the  first-mentioned  two  causes  of  destruction,  but  he  esti- 

*  Die  Inseln  und  Marschen  der  Herzogthumer  Schleswig  und  Holstein, 
iii,  p.  151. 

t  The  purely  agricultural  island  of  Pelworm,  off  the  coast  of  Schleswig, 
containing  about  10,000  acres,  annually  expends  for  the  maintenance  of  its 
dikes  not  less  than  £6,000  sterling,  or  nearly  $30,000.— J.  G.  KOHL,  Inseln 
und  Marschen  Schleswig^s  und  Holsteiii's,  ii,  p.  394. 

The  original  cost  of  the  dikes  of  Pelworm  is  not  stated. 

"  The  greatest  part  of  the  province  of  Zeeland  is  protected  by  dikes 
measuring  250  miles  in  length,  the  maintenance  of  which  costs,  in  ordinary 
years,  more  than  a  million  guilders  [above  $400,000].  *  *  *  The  an 
nual  expenditure  for  dikes  and  hydraulic  works  in  Holland  is  from  five  to 
seven  million  guilders"  [$2,000,000  to  $2,800,000].— WILD,  Die  Nieder- 
lande,  i,  p.  62. 

One  is  not  sorry  to  learn  that  the  Spanish  tyranny  in  the  Netherlands 
had  some  compensations.  The  great  chain  of  ring  dikes  which  surrounds 
a  large  part  of  Zeeland  is  due  to  the  energy  of  Caspar  de  Robles,  the 
Spanish  governor  of  that  province,  who  in  1570  ordered  the  construction 
of  these  works  at  the  public  expense,  as  a  substitute  for  the  private  em 
bankments  which  had  previously  partially  served  the  same  purpose. — WILD, 
Die  Niederlande,  i,  p.  62. 
22 


338  CHAKACTEK   OF   GROUNDS   DIKED   IN. 

mates  that  not  less  than  six  hundred  and  forty  thousand  bun 
der,  or  one  million  five  hundred  and  eighty-one  thousand 
acres,  of  fen  and  marsh  have  been  washed  away,  or  rather 
deprived  of  their  vegetable  surface  and  covered  by  water,  and 
thirty-seven  thousand  bunder,  or  ninety-one  thousand  four 
hundred  acres  of  recovered  land,  have  been  lost  by  the  destruc 
tion  of  the  dikes  which  protected  them.*  The  average  value 
of  land  gained  from  the  sea  is  estimated  at  about  nineteen 
pounds  sterling,  or  ninety  dollars,  per  acre ;  while  the  lost 
fen  and  morass  was  not  worth  more  than  one  twenty-fifth 
part  of  the  same  price.  The  ground  buried  by  the  drifting  of 
the  dunes  appears  to  have  been  almost  entirely  of  this  latter 
character,  and,  upon  the  whole,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  soil 
added  by  human  industry  to  the  territory  of  the  Netherlands, 
within  the  historical  period,  greatly  exceeds  in  pecuniary  value 
that  which  has  fallen  a  prey  to  the  waves  during  the  same  era. 

Upon  most  low  and  shelving  coasts,  like  those  of  the  Neth 
erlands,  the  maritime  currents  are  constantly  changing,  in 
consequence  of  the  variability  of  the  winds,  and  the  shifting 
of  the  sandbanks,  which  the  currents  themselves  now  form  and 
now  displace.  "While,  therefore,  at  one  point  the  sea  is  ad 
vancing  landward,  and  requiring  great  effort  to  prevent  the 
undermining  and  washing  away  of  the  dikes,  it  is  shoaling  at 
another  by  its  own  deposits,  and  exposing,  at  low  water,  a 
gradually  widening  belt  of  sands  and  ooze.  The  coast  lands 
selected  for  diking-in  are  always  at  points  where  the  sea  is 
depositing  productive  soil.  The  Eider,  the  Elbe,  the  "Weser, 
the  Ems,  the  Rhine,  the  Maas,  and  the  Schelde  bring  down 
large  quantities  of  fine  earth.  The  prevalence  of  west  winds 
prevents  the  waters  from  carrying  this  material  far  out  from 
the  coast,  and  it  is  at  last  deposited  northward  or  southward 
from  the  mouth  of  the  rivers  which  contribute  it,  according  to 
the  varying  drift  of  the  currents. 

The  process  of  natural  deposit  which  prepares  the  coast  for 
diking-in  is  thus  described  by  Staring :  "  All  sea-deposited  soil 

*  STABING,  Voormaals  en  Thans,  p.  163. 


ISLANDS   ENLARGED   BY   DIKING.  339 

is  composed  of  the  same  constituents.  First  comes  a  stratum 
of  sand,  with  marine  shells,  or  the  shells  of  mollusks  living  in 
brackish  water.  If  there  be  tides,  and,  of  coarse,  flowing  and 
ebbing  currents,  mud  is  let  fall  upon  the  sand  only  after  the 
latter  has  been  raised  above  low-water  mark ;  for  then  only, 
at  the  change  from  flood  to  ebb,  is  the  water  still  enough  to 
form  a  deposit  of  so  light  a  material.  Where  mud  is  found  at 
greater  depths,  as,  for  example,  in  a  large  proportion  of  the  Ij, 
it  is  a  proof  that  at  this  point  there  was  never  any  consid 
erable  tidal  flow  or  other  current.  *  *  *  The  powerful 
tidal  currents,  flowing  and  ebbing  twice  a  day,  drift  sand  with 
them.  They  scoop  out  the  bottom  at  one  point,  raise  it  at 
another,  and  the  sandbanks  in  the  current  are  continually 
shifting.  As  soon  as  a  bank  raises  itself  above  low-water 
mark,  flags  and  reeds  establish  themselves  upon  it.  The  me 
chanical  resistance  of  these  plants  checks  the  retreat  of  the 
high  water  and  favors  the  deposit  of  the  earth  suspended  in  it, 
and  the  formation  of  land  goes  on  with  surprising  rapidity. 
When  it  has  risen  to  high-water  level,  it  is  soon  covered  with 
grasses,  and  becomes  what  is  called  sclior  in  Zeeland,  Icwelder 
in  Friesland.  Such  grounds  are  the  foundation  or  starting 
point  of  the  process  of  diking.  "When  they  are  once  elevated 
to  the  flood-tide  level,  no  more  mud  is  deposited  upon  them 
except  by  extraordinary  high  tides.  Their  further  rise  is, 
accordingly,  very  slow,  and  it  is  seldom  advantageous  to  delay 
longer  the  operation  of  diking."  * 

The  formation  of  new  banks  by  the  sea  is  constantly  going 
on  at  points  favorable  for  the  deposit  of  sand  and  earth,  and 
hence  opportunity  is  continually  afforded  for  enclosure  of  new 
land  outside  of  that  already  diked  in,  the  coast  is  fast  advanc 
ing  seaward,  and  every  new  embankment  increases  the  se 
curity  of  former  enclosures.  The  province  of  Zeeland  consists 
of  islands  washed  by  the  sea  on  their  western  coasts,  and  sep 
arated  by  the  many  channels  through  which  the  Schelde  and 
some  other  rivers  find  their  way  to  the  ocean.  In  the  twelfth 

*   Voormaah  en  Thans,  pp.  150,  151. 


340  OKIGIN   OF   THE   NETHEKLAND   DIKES. 

century  these  islands  were  much  smaller  and  more  numerous 
than  at  present.  They  have  been  gradually  enlarged,  and,  in 
several  instances,  at  last  connected  by  the  extension  of  their 
system  of  dikes.  Walcheren  is  formed  of  ten  islets  united  into 
one  about  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century.  At  the  middle 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  Goeree  and  Overflakkee  consisted  of 
separate  islands,  containing  altogether  about  ten  thousand 
acres ;  by  means  of  above  sixty  successive  advances  of  the 
dikes,  they  have  been  brought  to  compose  a  single  island, 
whose  area  is  not  less  than  sixty  thousand  acres.* 

In  the  Netherlands — which  the  first  Napoleon  character 
ized  as  a  deposit  of  the  Rhine,  and  as,  therefore,  by  natural 
law,  rightfully  the  property  of  him  who  controlled  the  sources 
of  that  great  river — and  on  the  adjacent  Frisic,  Low  German 
and  Danish  shores  and  islands,  sea  and  river  dikes  have  been 
constructed  on  a  grander  and  more  imposing  scale  than  in  any 
other  country.  The  whole  economy  of  the  art  has  been  there 
most  thoroughly  studied,  and  the  literature  of  the  subject  is 
very  extensive.  For  my  present  aim,  which  is  concerned  with 
results  rather  than  with  processes,  it  is  not  worth  while  to  refer 
to  professional  treatises,  and  I  shall  content  myself  with  pre 
senting  such  information  as  can  be  gathered  from  works  of  a 
more  popular  character.f 

The  superior  strata  of  the  lowlands  upon  and  near  the 
coast  are,  as  we  have  seen,  principally  composed  of  soil 

*  STARING,  Voormaals  en  Thans,  p.  152.  Kohl  states  that  the  peninsula 
of  Diksand  on  the  coast  of  Holstein  consisted,  at  the  close  of  the  last  cen 
tury,  of  several  islands  measuring  together  less  than  five  thousand  acres. 
In  1837  they  had  been  connected  with  the  mainland,  and  had  nearly 
doubled  in  area. — Inseln  u.  Marschen  Schlcsw.  Hoist.,  iii,  p.  262. 

t  The  most  instructive  and  entertaining  of  tourists,  J.  G.  Kohl — so 
aptly  characterized  by  Davies  as  the  "Herodotus  of  modern  Europe" — 
furnishes  a  great  amount  of  interesting  information  on  the  dikes  of  tho  Low 
German  seacoast,  in  his  Inseln  und  MarscJien  der  Herzogtliumer  Schleswig 
und  Holstein.  I  am  acquainted  with  no  popular  work  on  this  subject 
which  the  reader  can  consult  with  greater  profit.  See  also  STAKING, 
Voormaals  en  Thans,  and  De  Bodcm  tan  Nederland,  on  the  dikes  of  the 
Netherlands. 


CONSTRUCTION   OF   DIKES.  341 

brought  down  by  the  great  rivers  I  have  mentioned,  and 
either  directly  deposited  by  them  upon  the  sands  of  the  bot 
tom,  or  carried  out  to  sea  by  their  currents,  and  then,  after  a 
shorter  or  longer  exposure  to  the  chemical  and  mechanical 
action  of  salt  water  and  marine  currents,  restored  again  to  the 
land  by  tidal  overflow  and  subsidence  from  the  waters  in 
which  it  was  suspended.  At  a  very  remote  period,  the  coast 
flats  were,  at  many  points,  raised  so  high  by  successive  allu 
vions  or  tidal  deposits  as  to  be  above  ordinary  high  water 
level,  but  they  were  still  liable  to  occasional  inundation  from 
river  floods,  and  from  the  sea  water  also,  when  heavy  or  long- 
continued  west  winds  drove  it  landward.  The  extraordinary 
fertility  of  this  soil  and  its  security  as  a  retreat  from  hostile 
violence  attracted  to  it  a  considerable  population,  while  its 
want  of  protection  against  inundation  exposed  it  to  the  devas 
tations  of  which  the  chroniclers  of  the  Middle  Ages  have  left 
such  highly  colored  pictures.  The  first  permanent  dwellings 
on  the  coast  flats  were  erected  upon  artificial  mounds,  and 
many  similar  precarious  habitations  still  exist  on  the  unwalled 
islands  and  shores  beyond  the  chain  of  dikes.  River  embank 
ments,  which,  as  is  familiarly  known,  have  from  the  earliest 
antiquity  been  employed  in  many  countries  where  sea  dikes 
are  unknown,  were  probably  the  first  wrorks  of  this  character 
constructed  in  the  Low  Countries,  and  when  two  neighboring 
streams  of  fresh  water  had  been  embanked,  the  next  step  in 
the  process  would  naturally  be  to  connect  the  river  walls 
together  by  a  transverse  dike  or  raised  causeway,  which  would 
serve  to  secure  the  intermediate  ground  both  against  the  back 
water  of  river  floods  and  against  overflow  by  the  sea.  The 
oldest  true  sea  dikes  described  in  historical  records,  however, 
are  those  enclosing  islands  in  the  estuaries  of  the  great  rivers, 
and  it  is  not  impossible  that  the  double  character  they  possess 
as  a  security  against  maritime  floods  and  as  a  military  ram 
part,  led  to  their  adoption  upon  those  islands  before  similar 
constructions  had  been  attempted  upon  the  mainland. 

At  some  points  of  the  coast,  various  contrivances,  such  as 
piers,  piles,  and,  in  fact,  obstructions  of  all  sorts  to  the  ebb  of 


342  CONSTBUCTION   OF   DIKES. 

the  current,  are  employed  to  facilitate  the  deposit  of  slime, 
before  a  regular  enclosure  is  commenced.  Usually,  however, 
the  first  step  is  to  build  low  and  cheap  embankments,  extend 
ing  from  an  older  dike,  or  from  high  ground,  around  the 
parcel  of  flat  intended  to  be  secured.  These  are  called  summer 
dikes  (sommer-deich,  pi.  sommer-deiche,  German ;  zonierkaai, 
somerJtade,  pi.  zomerlcaaie,  zomerkaden,  Dutch).  They  are 
erected  when  a  sufficient  extent  of  ground  to  repay  the  cost 
has  been  elevated  enough  to  be  covered  with  coarse  vegetation 
fit  for  pasturage.  They  serve  both  to  secure  the  ground  from 
overflow  by  the  ordinary  flood  tides  of  mild  weather,  and  to 
retain  the  slime  deposited  by  very  high  water,  which  would 
otherwise  be  partly  carried  off  by  the  retreating  ebb.  The 
elevation  of  the  soil  goes  on  slowly  after  this  ;  but  when  it  has 
at  last  been  sufficiently  enriched,  and  raised  high  enough  to 
justify  the  necessary  outlay,  permanent  dikes  are  constructed 
by  which  the  water  is  excluded  at  all  seasons.  These  embank 
ments  are  constructed  of  sand  from  the  coast  dunes  or  from 
sandbanks,  and  of  earth  from  the  mainland  or  from  flats  out 
side  the  dikes,  bound  and  strengthened  by  fascines,  and  pro 
vided  with  sluices,  which  are  generally  founded  on  piles  and 
of  very  expensive  construction,  for  drainage  at  low  water. 
The  outward  slope  of  the  sea  dikes  is  gentle,  experience  having 
shown  that  this  form  is  least  exposed  to  injury  both  from  the 
waves  and  from  floating  ice,  and  the  most  modern  dikes  are 
even  more  moderate  in  the  inclination  of  the  seaward  scarp 
than  the  older  ones.*  The  crown  of  the  dike,  however,  for  the 
last  three  or  four  feet  of  its  height,  is  much  steeper,  being 
intended  rather  as  a  protection  against  the  spray  than  against 
the  waves,  and  the  inner  slope  is  always  comparatively  abrupt. 
The  height  and  thickness  of  dikes  varies  according  to  the 
elevation  of  the  ground  they  enclose,  the  rise  of  the  tides,  the 
direction  of  the  prevailing  winds,  and  other  special  causes  of 
exposure,  but  it  may  be  said  that  they  are,  in  general,  raised 
from  fifteen  to  twenty  feet  above  ordinary  high-water  mark. 

*  The  inclination  varies  from  one  foot  rise  in  four  of  base  to  one  foot 
In  fourteen. — KOHL,  iii,  p.  210. 


EXTENSION    OF   DIKES.  343 

The  water  slopes  of  river  dikes  are  protected  by  plantations  of 
willows  or  strong  semi-aquatic  shrubs  or  grasses,  but  as  these 
will  not  grow  upon  banks  exposed  to  salt  water,  sea  dikes 
must  be  faced  with  stone,  fascines,  or  some  other  rcvetement.* 
Upon  the  coast  of  Schleswig  and  Holstein,  where  the  people 
have  less  capital  at  their  command,  they  defend  their  embank 
ments  against  ice  and  the  waves  by  a  coating  of  twisted  straw 
or  reeds,  which  must  be  renewed  as  often  as  once,  sometimes 
twice  a  year.  The  inhabitants  of  these  coasts  call  the  chain  of 
dikes  "  the  golden  border,"  a  name  it  well  deserves,  whether 
we  suppose  it  to  refer  to  its  enormous  cost,  or,  as  is  more 
probable,  to  its  immense  value  as  a  protection  to  their  fields 
and  their  firesides. 

When  outlying  flats  are  enclosed  by  building  new  embank 
ments,  the  old  interior  dikes  are  suffered  to  remain,  both  as  an 
additional  security  against  the  waves,  and  because  the  removal 
of  them  would  be  expensive.  They  serve,  also,  as  roads  or 
causeways,  a  purpose  for  which  the  embankments  nearest  the 
sea  are  seldom  employed,  because  the  whole  structure  might 
be  endangered  from  the  breaking  of  the  turf  by  wheels  and 
the  hoofs  of  horses.  "Where  successive  rows  of  dikes  have  been 

*  The  dikes  are  sometimes  founded  upon  piles,  and  sometimes  protected 
by  one  or  more  rows  of  piles  driven  deeply  down  into  the  bed  of  the  sea 
in  front  of  them.  u  Triple  rows  of  piles  of  Scandinavian  pine,"  says  Wild, 
"  have  been  driven  down  along  the  coast  of  Friesland,  where  there  are  no 
dunes,  for  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles.  The  piles  are  bound 
together  by  strong  cross  timbers  and  iron  clamps,  and  the  interstices  filled 
with  stones.  The  ground  adjacent  to  the  piling  is  secured  with  fascines, 
and  at  exposed  points  heavy  blocks  of  stone  are  heaped  up  as  an  additional 
protection.  The  earth  dike  is  built  behind  the  mighty  bulwark  of  this 
breakwater,  and  its  foot  also  is  fortified  with  stones."  *  *  *  «  The 
great,  Helder  dike  is  about  five  miles  long  and  forty  feet  wide  at  the  top, 
along  whicb  runs  a  good  road.  It  slopes  down  two  hundred  feet  into  the 
sea,  at  an  angle  of  forty  degrees.  The  highest  waves  do  not  reach  the 
summit,  the  lowest  always  cover  its  base.  At  certain  distances,  immense 
buttresses,  of  a  height  and  width  proportioned  to  those  of  the  dike,  and 
even  more  strongly  built,  run  several  hundred  feet  out  into  the  rolling  sea. 
This  gigantic  artificial  coast  is  entirely  composed  of  Norwegian  granite."— 
WILD,  Die  Niedcrlandc,  i,  pp.  61,  62. 


344  SINKING   OF  THE   SOIL. 

thus  constructed,  it  is  observed  that  the  ground  defended  by 
the  more  ancient  embankments  is  lower  than  that  embraced 
within  the  newer  enclosures,  and  this  depression  of  level  has 
been  ascribed  to  a  general  subsidence  of  the  coast  from  geo 
logical  causes  ;  but  the  better  opinion  seems  to  be  that  it  is,  in 
most  cases,  due  merely  to  the  consolidation  and  settling  of  the 
earth  from  being  more  effectually  dried,  from  the  weight  of 
the  dikes,  from  the  tread  of  men  and  cattle,  and  from  the 
movement  of  the  heavy  wagons  which  carry  off  the  crops.* 

*  The  shaking  of  the  ground,  even  when  loaded  with  large  buildings, 
by  the  passage  of  heavy  carriages  or  artillery,  or  by  the  march  of  a  body 
of  cavalry  or  even  infantry,  shows  that  such  causes  may  produce  important 
mechanical  effects  on  the  condition  of  the  soil.  The  bogs  in  the  Nether 
lands,  as  in  most  other  countries,  contain  large  numbers  of  fallen  trees, 
buried  to  a  certain  depth  by  earth  and  vegetable  mould.  "When  the  bogs 
are  dry  enough  to  serve  as  pastures,  it  is  observed  that  trunks  of  these  an 
cient  trees  rise  of  themselves  to  the  surface.  Staring  ascribes  this  singular 
phenomenon  to  the  agitation  of  the  ground  by  the  tread  of  cattle.  "  When 
roadbeds,"  observes  he,  "  are  constructed  of  gravel  and  pebbles  of  differ 
ent  sizes,  and  these  latter  are  placed  at  the  bottom  without  being  broken 
and  rolled  hard  together,  they  are  soon  brought  to  the  top  by  the  effect  of 
travel  on  the  road.  Lying  loosely,  they  undergo  some  motion  from  the 
passage  of  every  wagon  wheel  and  the  tread  of  every  horse  that  passes 
over  them.  This  motion  is  an  oscillation  or  partial  rolling,  and  as  one 
side  of  a  pebble  is  raised,  a  little  fine  sand  or  earth  is  forced  under  it,  and 
the  frequent  repetition  of  this  process  by  cattle  or  carriages  moving  in 
opposite  directions  brings  it  at  last  to  the  surface.  We  may  suppose  that 
a  similar  effect  is  produced  on  the  stems  of  trees  in  the  bogs  by  the  tread 
of  animals." — De  Bodem  van  Nedcrland,  i,  pp.  75,  76. 

It  is  observed  in  the  Northern  United  States,  that  when  soils  containing 
pebbles  are  cleared  and  cultivated,  and  the  stones  removed  from  the  sur 
face,  new  pebbles,  and  even  bowlders  of  many  pounds  weight,  continue  to 
show  themselves  above  the  ground,  every  spring,  for  a  long  series  of  years. 
In  clayey  soils  the  fence  posts  are  thrown  up  in  a  similar  way,  and  it  is  not 
uncommon  to  see  the  lower  rail  of  a  fence  thus  gradually  raised  a  foot  or 
even  two  feet  above  the  ground.  This  rising  of  stones  and  fences  is  popu 
larly  ascribed  to  the  action  of  the  severe  frosts  of  that  climate.  The 
expansion  of  the  ground,  in  freezing,  it  is  said,  raises  its  surface,  and,  with 
the  surface,  objects  lying  near  or  connected  with  it.  When  the  soil  thaws 
in  the  spring,  it  settles  back  again  to  its  former  level,  while  the  pebbles 
and  posts  are  prevented  from  sinking  as  low  as  before  by  loose  earth  which 


DRAINAGE   OF   LANDS   DIKED   IN.  34:5 

Notwithstanding  this  slow  sinking,  most  of  the  land  enclosed 
by  dikes  is  still  above  low-water  mark,  and  can,  therefore,  be 
wholly  or  partially  freed  from  rain  water,  and  from  that  re 
ceived  by  infiltration  from  higher  ground,  by  sluices  opened 
at  the  ebb  of  the  tide.  For  this  purpose,  the  land  is  carefully 
ditched,  and  advantage  is  taken  of  every  favorable  occasion  for 
discharging  the  water  through  the  sluices.  But  the  ground 
cannot  be  effectually  drained  by  this  means,  unless  it  is  ele 
vated  four  or  five  feet,  at  least,  above  the  level  of  the  ebb  tide, 
because  the  ditches  would  not  otherwise  have  a  sufficient 
descent  to  cany  the  water  off  in  the  short  interval  between 
ebb  and  flow,  and  because  the  moisture  of  the  saturated  sub 
soil  is  always  rising  by  capillary  attraction.  Whenever,  there 
fore,  the  soil  has  sunk  below  the  level  I  have  mentioned,  and 
in  cases  where  its  surface  has  never  been  raised  above  it, 
pumps,  worked  by  wind  or  some  other  mechanical  power, 
must  be  very  frequently  employed  to  keep  the  land  dry 
enough  for  pasturage  and  cultivation.* 

has  fallen  under  them.  The  fact  that  the  elevation  spoken  of  is  observed 
only  in  the  spring,  gives  countenance  to  this  theory,  which  is  perhaps 
applicable  also  to  the  cases  stated  by  Staring,  and  it  is  probable  that  the 
two  causes  above  assigned  concur  in  producing  the  effect. 

The  question  of  the  subsidence  of  the  Netherlandish  coast  has  been 
much  discussed.  Not  to  mention  earlier  geologists,  Venema,  in  several 
essays,  and  particularly  in  Het  Dalen  Tan  de  Noordelifte  KuststreTcen  'Kan 
ons  Land,  1854,  adduces  many  facts  and  arguments  to  prove  a  slow  sinking 
of  the  northern  provinces  of  Holland.  Laveleye  (Affaissement  du  sol  et 
encasement  des  flcuvcs  survemts  dans  les  temps  hi#toriqucs,  1859),  upon  a 
still  fuller  investigation,  arrives  at  the  same  conclusion.  The  eminent 
geologist  Staring,  however,  who  briefly  refers  to  the  subject  in  De  Bodem 
tan  Nederland,  i,  p.  356  et  seqq.,  does  not  consider  the  evidence  sufficient 
to  prove  anything  more  than  the  sinking  of  the  surface  of  the  polders 
from  drying  and  consolidation. 

*  The  elevation  of  the  lands  enclosed  by  dikes — or  polders,  as  they  are 
called  in  Holland — above  low  water  mark,  depends  upon  the  height  of  the 
tides,  or,  in  other  words,  upon  the  difference  between  ebb  and  flood.  The 
tide  cannot  deposit  earth  higher  than  it  flows,  and  after  the  ground  is  once 
enclosed,  the  decay  of  the  vegetables  grown  upon  it  and  the  addition  of 
manures  do  not  compensate  the  depression  occasioned  by  drying  and  con- 


34:6  DKAINING   OF   LAKES   AND   MARSHES. 

b.  Draining  of  Lakes  and  Marshes. 

The  substitution  of  steam  engines  for  the  feeble  and  uncer 
tain  action  of  windmills,  in  driving  pumps,  has  much  facil 
itated  the  removal  of  water  from  the  polders  and  the  draining 
of  lakes,  marshes,  and  shallow  bays,  and  thus  given  such  an 
impulse  to  these  enterprises,  that  not  less  than  one  hundred 
and  ten  thousand  acres  were  reclaimed  from  the  waters,  and 
added  to  the  agricultural  domain  of  the  Netherlands,  between 
1815  and  1858.  The  most  important  of  these  undertakings 
was  the  draining  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem,  and  for  this  purpose 
some  of  the  most  powerful  hydraulic  engines  ever  constructed 
were  designed  and  executed.*  The  origin  of  this  lake  is  un 
known.  It  is  supposed  by  some  geographers  to  be  a  part  of 
an  ancient  bed  of  the  Rhine,  the  channel  of  which,  as  there  is 
good  reason  to  believe,  has  undergone  great  changes  since  the 
Roman  invasion  of  the  Netherlands  ;  by  others  it  is  thought 
to  have  once  formed  an  inland  marine  channel,  separated  from 
the  sea  by  a  chain  of  low  islands,  which  the  sand  washed  up 
by  the  tides  has  since  connected  with  the  mainland  and  con 
verted  into  a  continuous  line  of  coast.  The  best  authorities, 
however,  find  geological  evidence  that  the  surface  occupied  by 
the  lake  was  originally  a  marshy  tract  containing  within  its 
limits  little  solid  ground,  but  many  ponds  and  inlets,  and 
much  floating  as  well  as  fixed  fen. 

In  consequence  of  the  cutting  of  turf  for  fuel,  and  the  de- 

solidation.  On  the  coast  of  Zeeland  and  the  islands  of  South  Holland,  the 
tides,  and  of  course  the  surface  of  the  lands  deposited  by  them,  are  so  high 
that  the  polders  can  be  drained  by  ditching  and  sluices,  but  at  other  points, 
as  in  the  enclosed  grounds  of  North  Holland  on  the  Zuiderzee,  where  the 
tide  rises  but  three  feet  or  even  less,  pumping  is  necessary  from  the  be 
ginning. — STARING,  Voormaah  en  Tham,  p.  152. 

*  The  principal  engine — called  the  Leeghwater,  from  the  name  of  an 
engineer  who  had  proposed  the  draining  of  the  lake  in  1641 — was  of  500 
horse  power,  and  drove  eleven  puinps  making  six  strokes  per  minute. 
Each  pump  raised  six  cubic  metres,  or  nearly  eight  cubic  yards  of  water  to 
the  stroke,  amounting  in  all  to  23,760  cubic  metres,  or  above  31,000  cubic 
yards,  the  hour. — WILD,  Die  Niederlande^  i,  p.  87. 


DRAINING   OF  THE  LAKE   OF  HAAELEM.  34:7 

struction  of  the  few  trees  and  shrubs  which  held  the  loose  soil 
together  with  their  roots,  the  ponds  are  supposed  to  have  grad 
ually  extended  themselves,  until  the  action  of  the  wind  upon 
their  enlarged  surface  gave  their  waves  sufficient  force  to  over 
come  the  resistance  of  the  feeble  barriers  which  separated 
them,  and  to  unite  them  all  into  a  single  lake.  Popular  tradi 
tion,  it  is  true,  ascribes  the  formation  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem 
to  a  single  irruption  of  the  sea,  at  a  remote  period,  and  con 
nects  it  with  one  or  another  of  the  destructive  inundations  of 
which  the  Netherland  chronicles  describe  so  many ;  but  on  a 
map  of  the  year  1531,  a  chain  of  four  smaller  waters  occupies 
nearly  the  ground  afterward  covered  by  the  Lake  of  Haarlem, 
and  they  have  more  probably  been  united  by  gradual  en 
croachments  resulting  from  the  improvident  practices  above 
referred  to,  though  no  doubt  the  consummation  may  have 
been  hastened  by  floods,  and  by  the  neglect  to  maintain  dikes, 
or  the  intentional  destruction  of  them,  in  the  long  wars  of  the 
sixteenth  century. 

The  Lake  of  Haarlem  was  a  body  of  water  not  far  from 
fifteen  miles  in  length,  by  seven  in  greatest  width,  lying  be 
tween  the  cities  of  Amsterdam  and  Leyden,  running  parallel 
with  the  coast  of  Holland  at  the  distance  of  about  five  miles 
from  the  sea,  and  covering  an  area  of  about  45,000  acres.  By 
means  of  the  Ij,  it  communicated  with  the  Zuiderzee,  the 
Mediterranean  of  the  Netherlands,  and  its  surface  was  little 
above  the  mean  elevation  of  that  of  the  sea.  Whenever,  there 
fore,  the  waters  of  the  Zuiderzee  were  acted  upon  by  strong 
northwest  winds,  those  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem  were  raised  pro 
portionally  and  driven  southward,  while  winds  from  the  south 
tended  to  create  a  flow  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  shores 
of  the  lake  were  everywhere  low,  and  though  in  the  course  of 
the  eighty  years  between  1767  and  1848  more  than  £350,000 
or  $1,700,000  had  been  expended  in  checking  its  encroach 
ments,  it  often  burst  its  barriers,  and  produced  destructive 
inundations.  On  the  29th  of  November,  1836,  a  south  wind 
brought  its  waters  to  the  very  gates  of  Amsterdam,  and  on  the 
26th  of  December  of  the  same  year,  in  a  northwest  gale,  they 


34:8  DKAINING   OF   THE    LAKE    OF   HAARLEM. 

overflowed  twenty  thousand  acres  of  land  at  the  southern  ex 
tremity  of  the  lake,  and  flooded  a  part  of  the  city  of  Ley  den. 
The  depth  of  water  did  not,  in  general,  exceed  fourteen  feet, 
but  the  bottom  was  a  semi-fluid  ooze  or  slime,  which  partook 
of  the  agitation  of  the  waves,  and  added  considerably  to  their 
mechanical  force.  Serious  fears  were  entertained  that  the  lake 
would  form  a  junction  with  the  inland  waters  of  the  Legmeer 
and  Mijdrecht,  swallow  up  a  vast  extent  of  valuable  soil,  and 
finally  endanger  the  security  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  laud 
which  the  industry  of  Holland  had  gained  in  the  course  of 
centuries  from  the  ocean. 

For  this  reason,  and  for  the  sake  of  the  large  addition  the 
bottom  of  the  lake  would  make  to  the  cultivable  soil  of  the 
state,  it  was  resolved  to  drain  it,  and  the  preliminary  steps  for 
that  purpose  were  commenced  in  the  year  1840.  The  first 
operation  was  to  surround  the  entire  lake  with  a  ring  canal 
and  dike,  in  order  to  cut  oif  the  communication  with  the  Ij,  and 
to  exclude  the  water  of  the  streams  and  morasses  which  dis 
charged  themselves  into  it  from  the  land  side.  The  dike  was 
composed  of  different  materials,  according  to  the  means  of  sup 
ply  at  different  points,  such  as  sand  from  the  coast  dunes,  earth 
and  turf  excavated  from  the  line  of  the  ring  canal,  and  floating 
turf,*  fascines  being  everywhere  used  to  bind  and  compact  the 

*  In  England  and  New  England,  where  tlie  marshes  have  been  already 
drained  or  are  of  comparatively  small  extent,  the  existence  of  large  floating 
islands  seems  incredible,  and  has  sometimes  been  treated  as  a  fable,  but  no 
geographical  fact  is  better  established.  Kohl  (Inseln  und  Marsclien  Schlcs- 
tcig-Holsteins,  iii,  p.  309)  reminds  us  that  Pliny  mentions  among  the 
wonders  of  Germany  the  floating  islands,  covered  with  trees,  which  met 
the  Eoman  fleets  at  the  mouths  of  the  Elbe  and  the  Weser.  Our  author 
speaks  also  of  having  visited,  in  the  territory  of  Bremen,  floating  moors, 
bearing  not  only  houses  but  whole  villages.  At  low  stages  of  the  water 
these  moors  rest  upon  a  bed  of  sand,  but  are  raised  from  six  to  ten  feet  by 
the  high  water  of  spring,  and  remain  afloat  until,  in  the  course  of  the  sum 
mer,  the  water  beneath  is  exhausted  by  evaporation  and  drainage,  when 
they  sink  down  upon  the  sand  again.  See  Appendix,  i\o.  08. 

Staring  explains,  in  an  interesting  way,  the  whole  growth,  formation,  and 
functions  of  floating  fens  or  bogs,  in  his  very  valuable  work,  De  Bodem  van 


DRAINING  OF  THE  LAKE  OF  HAARLEM.          349 

mass  together.  This  operation  was  completed  in  1848,  and 
three  steam  pumps  were  then  employed  for  five  years  in  dis 
charging  the  water.  The  whole  enterprise  was  conducted  at 
the  expense  of  the  state,  and  in  1853  the  recovered  lands  were 

Ncderland,  i,  pp.  36-43.  The  substance  of  his  account  is  as  follows  :  The 
first  condition  for  the  growth  of  the  plants  which  compose  the  substance 
of  turf  and  the  surface  of  the  fens,  is  stillness  of  the  water.  Hence  they 
are  not  found  in  running  streams,  nor  in  pools  so  large  as  to  be  subject  to 
frequent  agitation  by  the  wind.  For  example,  not  a  single  plant  grew  in 
the  open  part  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem,  and  fens  cease  to  form  in  all  pools 
as  soon  as,  by  the  cutting  of  the  turf  for  fuel  or  other  purposes,  their  area 
is  sufficiently  enlarged  to  be  much  acted  on  by  wind.  When  still  water 
above  a  yard  deep  is  left  undisturbed,  aquatic  plants  of  various  genera, 
such  as  Xuphar,  Nymphffia,  Limnanthemum,  Stratiotes,  Polygonum,  and 
Potamogeton,  fill  the  bottom  with  roots  and  cover  the  surface  with  leaves. 
Many  of  the  plants  die  every  year,  and  prepare  at  the  bottom  a  soil  fit  for 
the  growth  of  a  higher  order  of  vegetation,  Phragmites,  Acorus,  Spar- 
ganium,  Rumex,  Lythrum,  Pedicularis,  Spiraea,  Polystichum,  Comarum, 
Caltha,  &c.,  &c.  In  the  course  of  twenty  or  thirty  years  the  muddy 
bottom  is  filled  with  roots  of  aquatic  and  marsh  plants,  which  are  lighter 
than  water,  and  if  the  depth  is  great  enough  to  give  room  for  detaching 
this  vegetable  network,  a  couple  of  yards  for  example,  it  rises  to  the  sur 
face,  bearing  with  it,  of  course,  the  soil  formed  above  it  by  decay  of  stems 
and  leaves.  Xew  genera  now  appear  upon  the  mass,  such  as  Carex,  Men- 
yanthes,  and  others,  and  soon  thickly  cover  it.  The  turf  has  now  acquired 
a  thickness  of  from  two  to  four  feet,  and  is  called  in  Groningen  lad ;  in 
Friesland,  til,  tilland,  or  drijftil ;  in  Overijssel,  krag ;  and  in  Holland, 
rictzod.  It  floats  about  as  driven  by  the  wind,  gradually  increasing  in 
thickness  by  the  decay  of  its  annual  crops  of  vegetation,  and  in  about  half 
a  century  reaches  the  bottom  and  becomes  fixed.  If  it  has  not  been  in 
vaded  in  the  mean  time  by  men  or  cattle,  trees  and  arborescent  plants, 
Alnus,  Salix,  Myrica,  &c.  appear,  and  these  contribute  to  hasten  the  attach 
ment  of  the  turf  to  the  bottom,  both  by  their  weight  and  by  sending  their 
roots  quite  through  into  the  ground. 

This  is  the  regular  method  employed  by  nature  for  the  gradual  filling 
up  of  shallow  lakes  and  pools,  and  converting  them  first  into  morass  and 
then  into  dry  land.  Whenever  therefore  man  removes  the  peat  or  turf,  he 
exerts  an  injurious  geographical  agency,  and,  as  I  have  already  said,  there 
is  no  doubt  that  the  immense  extension  of  the  inland  seas  of  Holland  in 
modern  times  is  owing  to  this  and  other  human  imprudences.  "  Hundreds 
of  hectares  of  floating  pastures,"  says  our  author,  "which  have  nothing  in 
their  appearance  to  distinguish  them  from  grass  lands  resting  on  solid  bog, 


350  BENEFITS    OF   THE   ENTEKPKISE. 

offered  for  sale  for  its  benefit.  Up  to  1858,  forty-two  thou 
sand  acres  had  been  sold  at  not  far  from  sixteen  pounds  ster 
ling  or  seventy-seven  dollars  an  acre,  amounting  altogether  to 
£661,000  sterling  or  $3,200,000.  The  unsold  lands  were  val 
ued  at  more  than  £6,000  or  nearly  $30,000,  and  as  the  total 
cost  was  £764,500  or  about  $3,700,000,  the  direct  loss  to  the 
state,  exclusive  of  interest  on  the  capital  expended,  may  be 
stated  at  £100,000  or  something  less  than  $500,000. 

In  a  country  like  the  United  States,  of  almost  boundless 
extent  of  sparsely  inhabited  territory,  such  an  expenditure  for 
such  an  object  would  be  poor  economy.  But  Holland  has  a 
narrow  domain,  great  pecuniary  resources,  an  excessively 
crowded  population,  and  a  consequent  need  of  enlarged  room 
and  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  industry.  Under  such  cir 
cumstances,  and  especially  with  an  exposure  to  dangers  so 
formidable,  there  is  no  question  of  the  wisdom  of  the  measure. 
It  has  already  provided  homes  and  occupation  for  more  than 

are  found  in  Overijssel,  in  North  Holland  and  near  Utrecht.  In  short,  they 
occur  in  all  deep  bogs,  and  wherever  deep  water  is  left  long  undisturbed." 

In  one  case,  a  floating  island,  which  had  attached  itself  to  the  shore, 
continued  to  float  about  for  a  long  time  after  it  was  torn  off  by  a  flood, 
and  was  solid  enough  to  keep  a  pond  of  fresh  water  upon  it  sweet,  though 
the  \vater  in  which  it  was  swimming  had  become  brackish  from  the  irrup 
tion  of  the  sea.  After  the  hay  is  cut,  cattle  are  pastured  upon  these 
islands,  and  they  sometimes  have  large  trees  growing  upon  them. 

When  the  turf  or  peat  has  been  cut,  leaving  water  less  than  a  yard 
deep,  Equisetum  limosum  grows  at  once,  and  is  followed  by  the  second 
class  of  marsh  plants  mentioned  above.  Their  roots  do  not  become  de 
tached  from  the  bottom  in  such  shallow  water,  but  form  ordinary  turf  or 
peat.  These  processes  are  so  rapid  that  a  thickness  of  from  three  to  six 
feet  of  turf  is  formed  in  half  a  century,  and  many  men  have  lived  to  mow 
grass  where  they  had  fished  in  their  boyhood,  and  to  cut  turf  twice  in  the 
same  spot. 

Captain  G-illiss  says  that  before  Lake  Taguataga  in  Chili  was  drained, 
there  were  in  it  islands  composed  of  dead  plants  matted  together  to  a 
thickness  of  from  four  to  six  feet,  and  with  trees  of  medium  size  growing 
upon  them.  These  islands'  floated  before  the  wind  "  with  their  trees  and 
browsing  cattle." — United  States  Naval  Astronomical  Expedition  to  the 
Southern  Hemisphere,  i,  pp.  16,  17. 


PRIMITIVE   CONDITION   OF   THE   NETHERLANDS.  351 

five  thousand  citizens,  and  furnished  a  profitable  investment 
for  a  capital  of  not  less  than  £400,000  sterling  or  $2,000,000, 
which  has  been  expended  in  improvements  over  and  above  the 
purchase  money  of  the  soil ;  and  the  greater  part  of  this  sum, 
as  well  as  of  the  cost  of  drainage,  has  been  paid  as  a  compen 
sation  for  labor.  The  excess  of  governmental  expenditure  over 
the  receipts,  if  employed  in  constructing  ships  of  war  or  fortifi 
cations,  would  have  added  little  to  the  military  strength  of  the 
kingdom ;  but  the  increase  of  territory,  the  multiplication  of 
homes  and  firesides  which  the  people  have  an  interest  in  de 
fending,  and  the  augmentation  of  agricultural  resources,  con 
stitute  a  stronger  bulwark  against  foreign  invasion  than  a  ship 
of  the  line  or  a  fortress  armed  with  a  hundred  cannon. 

The  bearing  of  the  works  I  have  noticed,  and  of  others 
similar  in  character,  upon  the  social  and  moral,  as  well  as  the 
purely  economical  interests  of  the  people  of  the  Netherlands, 
has  induced  me  to  describe  them  more  in  detail  than  the  gen 
eral  purpose  of  this  volume  may  be  thought  to  justify  ;  but  if 
we  consider  them  simply  from  a  geographical  point  of  view, 
\ve  shall  find  that  they  are  possessed  of  no  small  importance  as 
modifications  of  the  natural  condition  of  terrestrial  surface. 
There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  before  the  establishment 
of  a  partially  civilized  race  upon  the  territory  now  occupied 
by  Dutch,  Frisic,  and  Low  German  communities,  the  grounds 
not  exposed  to  inundation  were  overgrown  with  dense  woods, 
that  the  lowlands  between  these  forests  and  the  sea  coasts  wrere 
marshes,  covered  and  partially  solidified  by  a  thick  matting 
of  peat  plants  and  shrubs  interspersed  with  trees,  and  that 
even  the  sand  dunes  of  the  shore  were  protected  by  a  vege 
table  growth  which,  in  a  great  measure,  prevented  the  drifting 
and  translocation  of  them. 

The  present  causes  of  river  and  coast  erosion  existed,  in 
deed,  at  the  period  in  question  ;  but  some  of  them  must  have 
acted  with  less  intensity,  there  were  strong  natural  safeguards 
against  the  influence  of  marine  and  fresh-water  currents,  and 
the  conflicting  tendencies  had  arrived  at  a  condition  of  approx 
imate  equilibrium,  which  permitted  but  slow  and  gradual 


352  CHANGES    PRODUCED   BY    MAN. 

changes  in  the  face  of  nature.  The  destruction  of  the  forests 
around  the  sources  and  along  the  valleys  of  the  rivers  by  man 
gave  them  a  more  torrential  character.  The  felling  of  the 
trees,  and  the  extirpation  of  the  shrubbery  upon  the  fens  by 
domestic  cattle,  deprived  the  surface  of  cohesion  and  consist 
ence,  and  the  cutting  of  peat  for  fuel  opened  cavities  in  it, 
which,  filling  at  once  with  water,  rapidly  extended  themselves 
by  abrasion  of  their  borders,  and  finally  enlarged  to  pools, 
lakes,  and  gulfs,  like  the  Lake  of  Haarlem  and  the  northern 
part  of  the  Zuiderzee.  The  cutting  of  the  wood  and  the  depas 
turing  of  the  grasses  upon  the  sand  dunes  converted  them  from 
solid  bulwarks  against  the  ocean  to  loose  accumulations  of 
dust,  which  every  sea  breeze  drove  farther  landward,  burying, 
perhaps,  fertile  soil  and  choking  up  watercourses  on  one  side, 
and  exposing  the  coast  to  erosion  by  the  sea  upon  the  other. 

c.   Geographical  Influence  of  such  Operations. 

The  changes  which  human  action  has  produced  within 
twenty  centuries  in  the  Netherlands  and  the  neighboring  prov 
inces,  are  certainly  of  no  small  geographical  importance,  con 
sidered  simply  as  a  direct  question  of  loss  and  gain  of  territory. 
They  have  also  undoubtedly  been  attended  with  some  climatic 
consequences,  they  have  exercised  a  great  influence  on  the 
spontaneous  animal  and  vegetable  life  of  this  region,  and  they 
cannot  have  failed  to  produce  effects  upon  tidal  and  other 
oceanic  currents,  the  range  of  which  may  be  very  extensive. 
The  force  of  the  tidal  wave,  the  height  to  which  it  rises,  the 
direction  of  its  currents,  and,  in  fact,  all  the  phenomena  which 
characterize  it,  as  well  as  all  the  effects  it  produces,  depend  as 
much  upon  the  configuration  of  the  coast  it  washes,  and  the 
depth  of  water,  and  form  of  bottom  near  the  shore,  as  upon 
the  attraction  which  occasions  it.  Every  one  of  the  terrestrial 
conditions  which  affect  the  character  of  tidal  and  other  marine 
currents  has  been  very  sensibly  modified  by  the  operations  I 
have  described,  and  on  this  coast,  at  least,  man  has  acted 
almost  as  powerfully  on  the  physical  geography  of  the  sea  as 
on  that  of  the  land. 


LOWERING  OF  THE  LAKE  OF  ALBANO.          353 

Lowering  of  Lakes. 

The  hydraulic  works  of  the  Netherlands  and  of  the  neigh 
boring  states  are  of  such  magnitude,  that  they  quite  throw  into 
the  shade  all  other  known  artificial  arrangements  for  defending 
the  land  against  the  encroachments  of  the  rivers  and  the  sea, 
and  for  reclaiming  to  the  domain  of  agriculture  and  civiliza 
tion  soil  long  covered  by  the  waters.  But  although  the  re 
covery  and  protection  of  lands  flooded  by  the  sea  seems  to  be 
an  art  wholly  of  Netherlandish  origin,  we  have  abundant  evi 
dence,  that  in  ancient  as  well  as  in  comparatively  modern 
times,  great  enterprises  more  or  less  analogous  in  character 
have  been  successfully  undertaken,  both  in  inland  Europe  and 
in  the  less  familiar  countries  of  the  East. 

One  of  the  best  known  of  these  is  the  tunnel  which  serves 
to  discharge  the  surplus  waters  of  the  Lake  of  Albano,  about 
fourteen  miles  from  Rome.  This  lake,  about  six  miles  in  cir 
cuit,  occupies  one  of  the  craters  of  an  extinct  volcanic  range, 
and  the  surface  of  its  waters  is  about  nine  hundred  feet  above 
the  sea.  It  is  fed  by  rivulets  and  subterranean  springs  origi 
nating  in  the  Alban  Mount,  or  Monte  Cavo,  the  most  elevated 
peak  of  the  volcanic  group  just  mentioned,  which  rises  to  the 
height  of  about  three  thousand  feet.  At  present  the  lake  has 
no  discoverable  natural  outlet,  but  it  is  not  known  that  the 
water  ever  stood  at  such  a  height  as  to  flow  regularly  over  the 
lip  of  the  crater.  It  seems  that  at  the  earliest  period  of  which 
we  have  any  authentic  memorials,  its  level  was  usually  kept 
by  evaporation,  or  by  discharge  through  subterranean  .chan 
nels,  considerably  below  the  rim  of  the  basin  which  encom 
passed  it,  but  in  the  year  397  B.  c.,  the  water,  either  from  the 
obstruction  of  such  channels,  or  in  consequence  of  increased 
supplies  from  unknown  sources,  rose  to  such  a  height  as  to 
flow  over  the  edge  of  the  crater,  and  threaten  inundation  to 
the  country  below  by  bursting  through  its  walls.  To  obviate 
this  danger,  a  tunnel  for  carrying  off  the  water  was  pierced  at 
a  level  much  below  the  height  to  which  it  had  risen.  This 
gallery,  cut*  entirely  with  the  chisel  through  the  rock  for  a 
23 


354:  LOWERING  OF   LAKE   FUC1NUS   OK   CELANO. 

distance  of  six  thousand  feet,  or  nearly  a  mile  and  one  seventh, 
is  still  in  so  good  condition  as  to  serve  its  original  purpose. 
The  fact  that  this  work  was  contemporaneous  with  the  siege 
of  Yeii,  has  given  to  ancient  annalists  occasion  to  connect  the 
two  events,  but  modern  critics  are  inclined  to  reject  Livy's 
account  of  the  matter,  as  one  of  the  many  improbable  fables 
which  disfigure  the  pages  of  that  historian.  It  is,  however, 
repeated  by  Cicero  and  by  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  and  it 
is  by  no  means  impossible  that,  in  an  age  when  priests  and 
soothsayers  monopolized  both  the  arts  of  natural  magic  and  the 
little  which  yet  existed  of  physical  science,  the  Government  of 
Rome,  by  their  aid,  availed  itself  at  once  of  the  superstition 
and  of  the  military  ardor  of  its  citizens  to  obtain  their  sanction 
to  an  enterprise  which  sounder  arguments  might  not  have 
induced  them  to  approve. 

Still  more  remarkable  is  the  tunnel  cut  by  the  Emperor 
Claudius  to  drain  the  Lake  Fueinus,  now  Lago  di  Celano,  in 
the  Neapolitan  territory,  about  fifty  miles  eastward  of  Rome. 
This  lake,  as  far  as  its  history  is  known,  has  varied  very  con 
siderably  in  its  dimensions  at  different  periods,  according  to 
the  character  of  the  seasons.  It  has  no  visible  outlet,  but  was 
originally  either  drained  by  natural  subterranean  conduits,  or 
kept  within  certain  extreme  limits  by  evaporation.  In  years 
of  uncommon  moisture,  it  spread  over  the  adjacent  soil  and 
destroyed  the  crops ;  in  dry  seasons,  it  retreated,  and  produced 
epidemic  disease  by  poisonous  exhalations  from  the  decay  of 
vegetable  and  animal  matter  upon  its  exposed  bed.  Julius 
Caesar  had  proposed  the  construction  of  a  tunnel  to  drain  the 
lake,  but  the  enterprise  was  not  actually  undertaken  until  the 
reign  of  Claudius,  when — after  a  temporary  failure,  from 
errors  in  levelling  by  the  engineers,  as  was  pretended  at  the 
time,  or,  as  now  appears  certain,  in  consequence  of  frauds  by 
the  contractors  in  the  execution  of  the  work — it  was  at  least 
partially  completed.  From  this  imperfect  construction,  it 
soon  got  out  of  repair,  but  was  restored  by  Hadrian,  and  seems 
to  have  answered  its  design  for  some  centuries.  In  the  bar 
barism  which  followed  the  downfall  of  the  empire,  it  again  fell 


tTNFOKESEEN  EFFECTS  OF  DRAINING  AND  LOWEKING  LAKES.     355 

into  decay,  and  though  numerous  attempts  were  made  to  re 
pair  it  during  the  Middle  Ages,  no  tolerable  success  seems  to 
have  attended  any  of  these  efforts,  until  the  present  gen 
eration. 

Works  have  now  been  some  years  in  progress  for  restoring, 
or  rather  enlarging  and  rebuilding  this  ancient  tunnel,  upon  a 
^cale  of  grandeur  which  does  infinite  honor  to  the  liberality 
and  public  spirit  of  the  projectors,  and  with  an  ingenuity  of 
design  and  a  constructive  skill  which  reflect  the  highest  credit 
upon  the  professional  ability  of  the  engineers  who  have  planned 
the  works  and  directed  their  execution.  The  length  of  this 
tunnel  is  18,634  feet,  or  rather  more  than  three  miles  and  a 
half.  Of  course,  it  is  one  of  the  longest  subterranean  galleries 
yet  executed  in  Europe,  and  it  offers  many  curious  particulars 
in  its  original  design  which  cannot  here  be  described.  The 
difference  between  the  highest  and  the  lowest  known  levels  of 
the  surface  of  the  lake  amounts  to  at  least  forty  feet,  and  the 
difference  of  area  covered  at  these  respective  stages  is  not 
much  less  than  eight  thousand  acres.  The  tunnel  will  re 
duce  the  water  to  a  much  lower  point,  and  it  is  computed 
that,  including  the  lands  occasionally  overflowed,  not  less  than 
forty  thousand  acres  of  as  fertile  soil  as  any  in  Italy  will  be 
recovered  from  the  lake  and  permanently  secured  from  inun 
dation  by  its  waters. 

Many  similar  enterprises  have  been  conceived  and  ex 
ecuted  in  modern  times,  both  for  the  purpose  of  reclaiming 
land  covered  by  water  and  for  sanitary  reasons.*  They  are 
sometimes  attended  with  wholly  unexpected  evils,  as,  for  ex 
ample,  in  the  case  of  Barton  Pond,  in  Vermont,  and  in  that 
of  the  Lake  StorsjO,  in  Sweden,  already  mentioned  on  a  former 

*  A  considerable  work  of  this  character  is  mentioned  by  Captain  Gilliss 
as  having  been  executed  in  Chili,  a  country  to  which  we  should  have 
hardly  looked  for  an  improvement  of  such  a  nature.  The  Lake  Taguataga 
was  partially  drained  by  cutting  through  a  narrow  ridge  of  land,  not  at  the 
natural  outlet,  but  upon  one  side  of  the  lake,  and  eight  thousand  acres  of 
land  covered  by  it  were  gained  for  cultivation. —  U.  S.  Naval  Astronomical 
Expedition  to  the  Southern  Hemisphere,  i,  pp.  16,  17. 


356  ORIGIN   OF   RIVER    BOTTOMS    OK   INTERVALES. 

page.  Another  still  less  obvious  consequence  of  the  with 
drawal  of  the  waters  has  occasionally  been  observed  in  these 
operations.  The  hydrostatic  force  with  which  the  water,  in 
virtue  of  its  specific  gravity,  presses  against  the  banks  that 
confine  it,  has  a  tendency  to  sustain  them  whenever  their  com 
position  and  texture  are  not  such  as  to  expose  them  to  soften 
ing  and  dissolution  by  the  infiltration  of  the  water.  If  then, 
the  slope  of  the  banks  is  considerable,  or  if  the  earth  of  which 
they  are  composed  rests  on  a  smooth  and  slippery  stratum 
inclining  toward  the  bed  of  the  lake,  they  are  liable  to  fall  or 
slide  forward  when  the  mechanical  support  of  the  water  is 
removed,  and  this  sometimes  happens  on  a  considerable  scale. 
A  few  years  ago,  the  surface  of  the  Lake  of  Lungern,  in  the 
Canton  of  Unterwalden,  in  Switzerland,  was  lowered  by  driv 
ing  a  tunnel  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  long  through  the  nar 
row  ridge,  called  the  Kaiserstuhl,  which  forms  a  barrier  at  the 
north  end  of  the  basin.  When  the  water  was  drawn  off,  the 
banks,  which  are  steep,  cracked  and  burst,  several  acres  of 
ground  slid  down  as  low  as  the  water  receded,  and  even  the 
whole  village  of  Lungern  was  thought  to  be  in  no  small  danger. 
Other  inconveniences  of  a  very  serious  character  have  often 
resulted  from  the  natural  wearing  down,  or,  much  more  fre 
quently,  the  imprudent  destruction,  of  the  barriers  which  con 
fine  mountain  lakes.  In  their  natural  condition,  such  basins 
serve  both  to  receive  and  retain  the  rocks  and  other  detritus 
brought  down  by  the  torrents  which  empty  into  them,  and  to 
check  the  impetus  of  the  rushing  waters  by  bringing  them  to 
a  temporary  pause ;  but  if  the  outlets  are  lowered  so  as  to 
drain  the  reservoirs,  the  torrents  continue  their  rapid  flow 
through  the  ancient  bed  of  the  basins,  and  carry  down  with 
them  the  sand  and  gravel  with  which  they  are  charged,  in 
stead  of  depositing  their  burden  as  before  in  the  still  waters  of 
the  lakes. 

Mountain  Lakes. 

It  is  a  common  opinion  in  America  that  the  river  mead 
ows,  bottoms,  or  intervales^  as  they  are  popularly  called,  are 


MOUNTAIN    LAKES.  357 

generally  tlie  beds  of  ancient  lakes  winch  have  burst  their 
barriers  and  left  running  currents  in  their  place.  It  was  shown 
by  Dr.  D wight,  many  years  ago,  that  this  is  very  far  from 
being  universally  true ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  mountain 
lakes  were  of  much  more  frequent  occurrence  in  primitive 
than  in  modern  geography,  and  there  are  many  chains  of  such 
still  existing  in  regions  where  man  has  yet  little  disturbed  the 
original  features  of  the  earth.  In  the  long  valleys  of  the  Adi 
rondack  range  in  Northern  New  York,  and  in  the  moun 
tainous  parts  of  Maine,  eight,  ten,  and  even  more  lakes  and 
lakelets  are  sometimes  found  in  succession,  each  emptying  into 
the  next  lower  pool,  and  so  all  at  last  into  some  considerable 
river.  When  the  mountain  slopes  which  supply  these  basins 
shall  be  stripped  of  their  woods,  the  augmented  swelling  of 
the  lakes  will  break  down  their  barriers,  their  waters  will  run 
off,  and  the  valleys  will  present  successions  of  flats  with  rivers 
running  through  them,  instead  of  chains  of  lakes  connected  by 
natural  canals. 

A  similar  state  of  things  seems  to  have  existed  in  the  an 
cient  geography  of  France.  "  Nature,"  says  Lavergne,  "  has 
not  excavated  on  the  flanks  of  our  Alps  reservoirs  as  magnifi 
cent  as  those  of  Lombardy  ;  she  had,  however,  constructed 
smaller,  but  more  numerous  lakes,  which  the  negligence  of 
man  has  permitted  to  disappear.  Auguste  de  Gasparin, 
brother  of  the  illustrious  agriculturist,  demonstrated  more 
than  thirty  years  ago,  in  an  original  paper,  that  many  natural 
dikes  formerly  existed  in  the  mountain  valleys,  which  have 
been  swept  away  by  the  waters.  He  proposed  to  rebuild  and 
to  multiply  them.  This  interesting  suggestion  has  reappeared 
several  times  since,  but  has  met  with  strong  opposition  from 
skilful  engineers.  It  would,  nevertheless,  be  well  to  try  the 
experiment  of  creating  artificial  lakes  which  should  fill  them 
selves  with  the  water  of  melting  snows  and  deluging  rains,  to 
be  drawn  out  in  times  of  drought.  If  this  plan  has  able  op- 
posers,  it  has  also  warm  advocates.  Experience  alone  can 
decide  the  question."  * 

*  Economic  Rurale  de  la  France,  p.  289. 


358      CLIMATIC  AND  GEOGRAPHICAL   EFFECTS   OF   AQUEDUCTS. 

Climatic  Effects  of  Draining  Lakes  and  Marshes. 

The  draining  of  lakes,  marshes,  and  other  superficial  accu 
mulations  of  moisture,  reduces  the  water  surface  of  a  country, 
and,  of  course,  the  evaporation  from  it.  Lakes,  too,  in  elevated 
positions,  lose  a  part  of  their  water  by  infiltration,  and  thereby 
supply  other  lakes,  springs,  and  rivulets  at  lower  levels.  Hence, 
it  is  evident  that  the  draining  of  such  waters,  if  carried  on 
upon  a  large  scale,  must  affect  both  the  humidity  and  the  tem 
perature  of  the  atmosphere,  and  the  permanent  supply  of 
water  for  extensive  districts.* 

Geographical  and  Climatic  Effects  of  Aqueducts,  Reservoirs, 

and  Canals. 

Many  processes  of  internal  improvement,  such  as  aque 
ducts  for  the  supply  of  great  cities,  railroad  cuts  and  embank 
ments,  and  the  like,  divert  water  from  its  natural  channels, 
and  affect  its  distribution  and  ultimate  discharge.  The  col 
lecting  of  the  waters  of  a  considerable  district  into  reservoirs, 
to  be  thence  carried  off  by  means  of  aqueducts,  as,  for  ex 
ample,  in  the  forest  of  Belgrade,  near  Constantinople,  deprives 
the  grounds  originally  watered  by  the  springs  and  rivulets  of 
the  necessary  moisture,  and  reduces  them  to  barrenness.  Sim 
ilar  effects  must  have  followed  from  the  construction  of  the 
numerous  aqueducts  which  supplied  ancient  Home  with  such 
a  profuse  abundance  of  water.  On  the  other  hand,  the  filtra 
tion  of  water  through  the  banks  or  walls  of  an  aqueduct  car- 

*  In  a  note  on  a  former  page  of  this  volume  I  noticed  an  observation 
of  Jacini,  to  the  effect  that  the  great  Italian  lakes  discharge  themselves 
partly  by  infiltration  beneath  the  hills  which  bound  them.  The  amount 
of  such  infiltration  must  depend  much  upon  the  hydrostatic  pressure  on 
the  walls  of  the  lake  basins,  and,  of  course,  the  lowering  of  the  surface  of 
these  lakes,  by  diminishing  that  pressure,  would  dimmish  also  the  infil 
tration.  It  is  now  proposed  to  lower  the  level  of  the  Lake  of  Como  some 
feet  by  deepening  its  outlet.  It  is  possible  that  the  effect  of  this  may 
manifest  itself  in  a  diminution  of  the  water  in  springs  and  fontanili  or 
artesian  wells  in  Lombardy.  See  Appendix,  No.  41. 


GEOGRAPHICAL   EFFECTS   OF   CANALS.  359 

ried  upon  a  high  level  across  low  ground,  often  injures  the 
adjacent  soil,  and  is  prejudicial  to  the  health  of  the  neighbor 
ing  population  ;  and  it  has  been  observed  in  Switzerland,  that 
fevers  have  been  produced  by  the  stagnation  of  the  water  in 
excavations  from  which  earth  had  been  taken  to  form  embank 
ments  for  railways. 

If  we  consider  only  the  influence  of  physical  improvements 
on  civilized  life,  we  shall  perhaps  ascribe  to  navigable  canals  a 
higher  importance,  or  at  least  a  more  diversified  influence, 
than  to  any  other  works  of  man  designed  to  control  the  waters 
of  the  earth,  and  to  affect  their  distribution.  They  bind  dis 
tant  regions  together  by  social  ties,  through  the  agency  of  the 
commerce  they  promote  :  they  facilitate  the  transportation  of 
military  stores  and  engines,  and  of  other  heavy  material  con 
nected  with  the  discharge  of  the  functions  of  government ;  they 
encourage  industry  by  giving  marketable  value  to  raw  ma 
terial  and  to  objects  of  artificial  elaboration  which  would  other 
wise  be  worthless  on  account  of  the  cost  of  conveyance ;  they 
supply  from  their  surplus  waters  means  of  irrigation  and  of 
mechanical  power  ;  and,  in  many  other  ways,  they  contribute 
much  to  advance  the  prosperity  and  civilization  of  nations.  Nor 
are  they  wholly  without  geographical  importance.  They  some 
times  drain  lands  by  conveying  off  water  which  would  other 
wise  stagnate  on  the  surface,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  like  aque 
ducts,  they  render  the  neighboring  soil  cold  and  moist  by  the 
percolation  of  water  through  their  embankments  ;  *  they  dam 

*  Simonde,  speaking  of  the  Tuscan  canals,  observes :  "  But  inundations 
are  not  the  only  damage  caused  by  the  waters  to  the  plains  of  Tuscany. 
Raised,  as  the  canals  are,  above  the  soil,  the  water  percolates  through 
their  banks,  penetrates  every  obstruction,  and,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts 
of  industry,  sterilizes  and  turns  to  morasses  fields  which  nature  and  the 
richness  of  the  soil  seemed  to  have  designed  for  the  most  abundant  har 
vests.  In  ground  thus  pervaded  with  moisture,  or  rendered  cold,  as  the 
Tuscans  express  it,  by  the  nitration  of  the  canal  water,  the  vines  and  the 
mulberries,  after  having  for  a  few  years  yielded  fruit  of  a  saltish  taste,  rot 
and  perish.  The  wheat  decays  in  the  ground^or  dies  as  soon  as  it  sprouts. 
Winter  crops  are  given  up,  and  summer  cultivation  tried  for  a  time  ;  but 
the  increasing  humidity,  and  the  saline  matter  communicated  to  the  earth 


360  SUPERFICIAL  DRAINING. 

lip,  check,  and  divert  the  course  of  natural  currents,  and  de 
liver  them  at  points  opposite  to,  or  distant  from,  their  original 
outlets ;  they  often  require  extensive  reservoirs  to  feed  them, 
thus  retaining  through  the  year  accumulations  of  water— 
which  would  otherwise  run  off,  or  evaporate  in  the  dry  sea 
son — and  thereby  enlarging  the  evaporable  surface  of  the 
country  ;  and  we  have  already  seen  that  they  interchange  the 
flora  and  the  fauna  of  provinces  widely  separated  by  nature. 
All  these  modes  of  action  certainly  influence  climate  and  the 
character  of  terrestrial  surface,  though  our  means  of  observa 
tion  are  not  yet  perfected  enough  to  enable  us  to  appreciate 
and  measure  their  effects. 

Climatic  and  Geographical  Effects  of  Surf  ace  and 
Underground  Draining. 

I  have  commenced  this  chapter  with  a  description  of  the 
dikes  and  other  hydraulic  works  of  the  Netherland  engineers, 
because  the  geographical  results  of  such  operations  are  more 
obvious  and  more  easily  measured,  though  certainly  not  more 
important,  than  those  of  the  older  and  more  widely  diffused 
modes  of  resisting  or  directing  the  flow  of  waters,  which  have 
been  practised  from  remote  antiquity  in  the  interior  of  all 
civilized  countries.  Draining  and  irrigation  are  habitually 
regarded  as  purely  agricultural  processes,  having  little  or  no 
relation  to  technical  geography ;  but  we  shall  find  that  they 
exert  a  powerful  influence  on  soil,  climate,  and  animal  and 
vegetable  life,  and  may,  therefore,  justly  claim  to  be  regarded 
as  geographical  elements. 

Surface  and  Under-draining  and  their  Ejfeets. 

Superficial  draining  is  a  necessity  in  all  lands  newly  re 
claimed  from  the  forest.  The  face  of  the  ground  in  the  woods 

— which  affects  the  tasto  of  all  its  products,  even  to  the  grasses,  which  the 
cattle  refuse  to  touch — at  last  compel  the  husbandman  to  abandon  his 
fields,  and  leave  uncultivated  a  soil  that  no  longer  repays  his  labor."— 
Tableau  de  F  Agriculture  Toscane,  pp.  11,12. 


UNDER-DRAINING.  361 

Is  never  so  regularly  inclined  as  to  permit  water  to  flow  freely 
over  it.  There  are,  even  on  the  hillsides,  many  small  ridges 
and  depressions,  partly  belonging  to  the  original  distribution 
of  the  soil,  and  partly  occasioned  by  irregularities  in  the 
growth  and  deposit  of  vegetable  matter.  These,  in  the  hus 
bandry  of  nature,  serve  as  danis  and  reservoirs  to  collect  a 
larger  supply  of  moisture  than  the  spongy  earth  can  at  once 
imbibe.  Besides  this,  the  vegetable  mould  is,  even  under  the 
most  favorable  circumstances,  slow  in  parting  with  the  hu 
midity  it  has  accumulated  under  the  protection  of  the  woods, 
and  the  infiltration  from  neighboring  forests  contributes  to 
keep  the  soil  of  small  clearings  too  wet  for  the  advantageous 
cultivation  of  artificial  crops.  For  these  reasons,  surface  drain 
ing  must  have  commenced  with  agriculture  itself,  and  there  is 
probably  no  cultivated  district,  one  may  almost  say  no  single 
field,  which  is  not  provided  with  artificial  arrangements  for 
facilitating  the  escape  of  superficial  water,  and  thus  carrying  off 
moisture  which,  in  the  natural  condition  of  the  earth,  would 
have  been  imbibed  by  the  soil. 

The  beneficial  effects  of  surface  drainage,  the  necessity  of 
extending  the  fields  as  population  increased,  and  the  incon 
veniences  resulting  from  the  presence  of  marshes  in  otherwise 
improved  regions,  must  have  suggested  at  a  very  early  period 
of  human  industry  the  expediency  of  converting  bogs  and 
swamps  into  dry  land  by  drawing  off  their  waters ;  and  it 
would  not  be  long  after  the  introduction  of  this  practice  before 
further  acquisition  of  agricultural  territory  would  be  made  by 
lowering  the  outlet  of  small  ponds  and  lakes,  and  adding  the 
ground  they  covered  to  the  domain  of  the  husbandman. 

All  these  processes  belong  to  the  incipient  civilization  of 
the  ante-historical  periods,  but  the  construction  of  subterranean 
channels  for  the  removal  of  infiltrated  water  marks  ages  and 
countries  distinguished  by  a  great  advance  in  agricultural 
theory  and  practice,  a  great  accumulation  of  pecuniary  capital, 
and  a  density  of  population  which  creates  a  ready  demand  and 
a  high  price  for  all  products  of  rural  industry.  Under-drain 
ing,  too,  would  be  most  advantageous  in  damp  and  cool  cli- 


3G2  DRAINAGE   BY   BORING. 

mates,  where  evaporation  is  slow,  and  upon  soils  where  the* 
natural  inclination  of  surface  does  not  promote  a  very  rapid 
flow  of  the  surface  waters.  All  the  conditions  required  to 
make  this  mode  of  rural  improvement,  if  not  absolutely  neces 
sary,  at  least  apparently  profitable,  exist  in  Great  Britain,  and 
it  is,  therefore,  very  natural  that  the  wealthy  and  intelligent 
farmers  of  England  should  have  carried  this  practice  farther, 
and  reaped  a  more  abundant  pecuniary  return  from  it,  than 
those  of  any  other  country. 

Besides  superficial  and  subsoil  drains,  there  is  another 
method  of  disposing  of  superfluous  surface  water,  which,  how 
ever,  can  rarely  be  practised,  because  the  necessary  conditions 
for  its  employment  are  not  of  frequent  occurrence.  Whenever 
a  tenacious  water-holding  stratum  rests  on  a  loose,  gravelly 
bed,  so  situated  as  to  admit  of  a  free  discharge  of  water  from 
or  through  it  by  means  of  the  outcropping  of  the  bed  at  a  lower 
level,  or  of  deep-lying  conduits  leading  to  distant  points  of 
discharge,  superficial  waters  may  be  carried  off  by  opening  a 
passage  for  them  through  the  impervious  into  the  permeable 
stratum.  Thus,  according  to  Bischof,  as  early  as  the  time  of 
King  Rene,  in  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  plain 
of  Faluns,  near  Marseilles,  was  laid  dry  by  boring,  and  "Wittwer 
informs  us  that  drainage  is  effected  at  Munich  by  conducting 
the  superfluous  water  into  large  excavations,  from  which  it 
filters  through  into  a  lower  stratum  of  pebble  and  gravel  lying 
a  little  above  the  level  of  the  river  Isar.*  So  at  Washington, 
in  the  western  part  of  the  city,  which  lies  high  above  the  rivers 
Potomac  and  Hock  Creek,  many  houses  are  provided  with  dry 
wells  for  draining  their  cellars  and  foundations.  These  extend 
through  hard  tenacious  earth  to  the  depth  of  thirty  or  forty 
feet,  when  they  strike  a  stratum  of  gravel,  through  which  the 
water  readily  passes  off". 

This  practice  has  been  extensively  employed  at  Paris,  not 
merely  for  carrying  off  ordinary  surface  water,  but  for  the  dis- 

*  Pliysikalisclie  Geographic,  p.  288.  Draining  by  driving  down  stakes, 
mentioned  in  a  note  in  a  chapter  on  the  woods,  ante,  is  a  process  of  the 
same  nature. 


EFFECTS   OF   DRAINING   ON   TEMPERATURE.  363 

charge  of  offensive  and  deleterious  fluids  from  chemical  and 
manufacturing  establishments.  A  well  of  this  sort  received, 
in  the  winter  of  1832-'33,  twenty  thousand  gallons  per  day 
of  the  foul  water  from  a  starch  factory,  and  the  same  process 
was  largely  used  in  other  factories.  The  apprehension  of 
injury  to  common  and  artesian  wells  and  springs  led  to  an 
investigation  on  this  subject,  in  behalf  of  the  municipal  author 
ities,  by  Girard  and  Parent  Dnchatelet,  in  the  latter  year. 
The  report  of  these  gentlemen,  published  in  the  Annales  des 
Ponts  et  Chaussees  for  1833,  second  half  year,  is  full  of  curious 
and  instructive  facts  respecting  the  position  and  distribution 
of  the  subterranean  waters  under  and  near  Paris  ;  but  it  must 
suffice  to  say  that  the  report  came  to  the  conclusion  that,  in 
consequence  of  the  absolute  immobility  of  these  waters,  and 
the  relatively  small  quantity  of  noxious  fluid  to  be  conveyed 
to  them,  there  was  110  danger  of  the  diffusion  of  this  latter,  if 
discharged  into  them.  This  result  will  not  surprise  those  wTho 
know  that,  in  another  work,  Duchatelet  maintains  analogous 
opinions  as  to  the  effect  of  the  discharge  of  the  city  sewers 
into  the  Seine  upon  the  waters  of  that  river.  The  quantity  of 
matter  delivered  by  them  he  holds  to  be  so  nearly  infinites 
imal,  as  compared  with  the  volume  of  water  of  the  Seine,  that 
it  cannot  possibly  affect  it  to  a  sensible  degree.  I  would,  how 
ever,  advise  determined  water  drinkers  living  at  Paris  to  adopt 
his  conclusions,  without  studying  his  facts  and  his  arguments ; 
for  it  is  quite  possible  that  he  may  convert  his  readers  to  a 
faith  opposite  to  his  own,  and  that  they  will  finally  agree  with 
the  poet  who  held  water  an  "  ignoble  beverage." 

Climatic  and  Geographical  Effects  of  Surface  Draining. 

When  we  remove  water  from  the  surface,  we  diminish  the 
evaporation  from  it,  and,  of  course,  the  refrigeration  which 
accompanies  all  evaporation  is  diminished  in  proportion. 
Hence  superficial  draining  ought  to  be  attended  with  an  ele 
vation  of  atmospheric  temperature,  and,  in  cold  countries,  it 
might  be  expected  to  lessen  the  frequency  of  frosts.  Accord 
ingly,  it  is  a  fact  of  experience  that,  other  things  being  equal, 


364  EFFECTS   OF   DRAINING   ON   TEMPEKATUKE. 

dry  soils,  and  the  air  in  contact  with  them,  are  perceptibly 
warmer  during  the  season  of  vegetation,  when  evaporation  is 
most  rapid,  than  moist  lands  and  the  atmospheric  stratum 
resting  upon  them.  Instrumental  observation  on  this  specia. 
point  has  not  yet  been  undertaken  on  a  very  large  scale,  but 
still  we  have  thermometric  data  sufficient  to  warrant  the  general 
conclusion,  and  the  influence  of  drainage  in  diminishing  the 
frequency  of  frost  appears  to  be  even  better  established  than  a 
direct  increase  of  atmospheric  temperature.  The  steep  and 
dry  uplands  of  the  Green  Mountain  range  in  New  England 
often  escape  frosts  when  the  Indian  corn  harvest  on  moister 
grounds,  five  hundred  or  even  a  thousand  feet  lower,  is  de 
stroyed  or  greatly  injured  by  them.  The  neighborhood  of  a 
marsh  is  sure  to  be  exposed  to  late  spring  and  early  autumnal 
frosts,  but  they  cease  to  be  feared  after  it  is  drained,  and  this 
is  particularly  observable  in  very  cold  climates,  as,  for  ex 
ample,  in  Lapland.* 

In  England,  under-drains  are  not  generally  laid  below  the 
reach  of  daily  variations  of  temperature,  or  below  a  point  from 
which  moisture  might  be  brought  to  the  surface  by  capillary 
attraction  and  evaporated  by  the  heat  of  the  sun.  They,  there 
fore,  like  surface  drains,  withdraw  from  local  solar  action  much 
moisture  which  would  otherwise  be  vaporized  by  it,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  by  drying  the  soil  above  them,  they  increase  its 
effective  hygroscopicity,  and  it  consequently  absorbs  from  the 
atmosphere  a  greater  quantity  of  water  than  it  did  when,  for 
want  of  under-drainage,  the  subsoil  was  always  humid,  if  not 
saturated.  Under-drains,  then,  contribute  to  the  dryness  as 
well  as  to  the  warmth  of  the  atmosphere,  and,  as  dry  ground 
is  more  readily  heated  by  the  rays  of  the  sun  than  wet,  they 
tend  also  to  raise  the  mean,  and  especially  the  summer  tem 
perature  of  the  soil. 

*  "  The  simplest  backwoodsman  knows  by  experience  that  all  culti< 
vation  is  impossible  in  the  neighborhood  of  bogs  and  marshes.  T7hy  is  a 
crop  near  the  borders  of  a  marsh  cut  off  by  frost,  while  a  field  upon  a 
hillock,  a  few  stone's  throws  from  it,  is  spared  ? " — LAES  LEVI  L^STADITIS, 
Om  UppolUngar  i  Lappmarkcn,  pp.  69,  74. 


UNFOKESEEN    EFFECTS    OF   DRAINING.  365 

So  far  as  respects  the  immediate  improvement  of  soil  and 
climate,  and  the  increased  abundance  of  the  harvests,  the  Eng 
lish  system  of  surface  and  subsoil  drainage  has  fully  justified 
the  eulogiums  of  its  advocates ;  but  its  extensive  adoption 
appears  to  have  been  attended  with  some  altogether  unforeseen 
and  undesirable  consequences,  very  analogous  to  those  which 
I  have  described  as  resulting  from  the  clearing  of  the  forests. 
The  under-drains  carry  off  very  rapidly  the  wrater  imbibed  by 
the  soil  from  precipitation,  and  through  infiltration  from  neigh 
boring  springs  or  other  sources  of  supply.  Consequently,  in 
wet  seasons,  or  after  heavy  rains,  a  river  bordered  by  artifi 
cially  drained  lands  receives  in  a  few  hours,  from  superficial 
and  from  subterranean  conduits,  an  accession  of  water  which, 
in  the  natural  state  of  the  earth,  would  have  reached  it  only 
by  small  instalments  after  percolating  through  hidden  paths 
for  weeks  or  even  months,  and  would  have  furnished  perennial 
and  comparatively  regular  contributions,  instead  of  swelling 
deluges,  to  its  channel.  Thus,  when  human  impatience  rashly 
substitutes  swiftly  acting  artificial  contrivances  for  the  slow 
methods  by  which  nature  drains  the  surface  and  superficial 
strata  of  a  river  basin,  the  original  equilibrium  is  disturbed, 
the  waters  of  the  heavens  are  no  longer  stored  up  in  the  earth 
to  be  gradually  given  out  again,  but  are  hurried  out  of  man's 
domain  with  wasteful  haste  ;  and  while  the  inundations  of  the 
river  are  sudden  and  disastrous,  its  current,  when  the  drains 
have  run  dry,  is  reduced  to  a  rivulet,  it  ceases  to  supply  the 
power  to  drive  the  machinery  for  which  it  was  once  amply 
sufficient,  and  scarcely  even  waters  the  herds  that  pasture  upon 
its  margin.* 

O 

Irrigation  and  its  Climatic  and  Geographical  Effects. 

We  know  little  of  the  history  of  the  extinct  civilizations 
which  preceded  the  culture  of  the  classic  ages,  and  no  nation 
has,  in  modern  times,  spontaneously  emerged  from  barbarism, 

*  Babinet  condemns  even  the  general  draining  of  marshes.  "  Drain 
ing,"  says  he,  "  has  been  much  in  fashion  for  some  years.  It  has  been  a 
special  object  to  dry  and  fertilize  marshy  grounds.  My  opinion  has  always 


366  ORIGIN    OF    IRRIGATION. 

and  created  for  itself  the  arts  of  social  life.*  The  improve 
ments  of  the  savage  races  whose  history  we  can  distinctly  trace 
are  borrowed  and  imitative,  and  our  theories  as  to  the  origin 
and  natural  development  of  industrial  art  are  conjectural.  Of 
course,  the  relative  antiquity  of  particular  branches  of  human 
industry  depends  much  upon  the  natural  character  of  soil,  cli 
mate,  and  spontaneous  vegetable  and  animal  life  in  different 
countries ;  and  while  the  geographical  influence  of  man  would, 
under  given  circumstances,  be  exerted  in  one  direction,  it 
would,  under  different  conditions,  act  in  an  opposite  or  a 
diverging  line.  I  have  given  some  reasons  for  thinking  that 
in  the  climates  to  which  our  attention  has  been  chiefly  directed, 
man's  first  interference  with  the  natural  arrangement  and  dis 
posal  of  the  waters  was  in  the  way  of  drainage  of  surface. 
But  if  we  are  to  judge  from  existing  remains  alone,  we  should 
probably  conclude  that  irrigation  is  older  than  drainage ;  for, 
in  the  regions  regarded  by  general  tradition  as  the  cradle  of 
the  human  race,  we  find  traces  of  canals  evidently  constructed 
for  the  former  purpose  at  a  period  long  preceding  the  ages  of 
which  we  have  any  written  memorials.  There  are,  in  ancient 
Armenia,  extensive  districts  which  were  already  abandoned  to 
desolation  at  the  earliest  historical  epoch,  but  which,  in  a  yet 
remoter  antiquity,  had  been  irrigated  by  a  complicated  and 
highly  artificial  system  of  canals,  the  lines  of  which  can  still 
be  followed ;  and  there  are,  in  all  the  highlands  where  the 
sources  of  the  Euphrates  rise,  in  Persia,  in  Egypt,  in  India, 

been  that  excessive  dryness  is  thus  produced,  and  that  other  soils  in  the 
neighborhood  are  sterilized  in  proportion." 

*  I  ought  perhaps  to  except  the  Mexicans  and  the  Peruvians,  whose 
arts  and  institutions  are  not  yet  shown  to  be  historically  connected  with 
those  of  any  more  ancient  people.  The  lamentable  destruction  of  so  many 
memorials  of  these  tribes,  by  the  ignorance  and  bigotry  of  the  so-called 
Christian  barbarians  who  conquered  them,  has  left  us  much  in  the  dark  as 
to  many  points  of  their  civilization  ;  but  they  seem  to  have  reached  that 
stage  where  continued  progress  in  knowledge  and  in  power  over  nature  is 
secure,  and  a  few  more  centuries  of  independence  might  have  brought 
them  to  originate  for  themselves  most  of  the  great  inventions  which  the 
last  four  centuries  have  bestowed  upon  man. 


EXTENT   OF   IEEIGATION    IN    EUROPE.  367 

and  hi  China,  works  of  this  sort  which  must  have  been  in 
existence  before  man  had  begun  to  record  his  own  annals. 

In  warm  countries,  such  as  most  of  those  just  mentioned, 
the  effects  I  have  described  as  usually  resulting  from  the  clear 
ing  of  the  forests  would  very  soon  follow.  In  such  climates, 
the  rains  are  inclined  to  be  periodical ;  they  are  also  violent, 
and  for  these  reasons  the  soil  would  be  parched  in  summer 
and  liable  to  wash  in  winter.  In  these  countries,  therefore,  the 
necessity  for  irrigation  must  soon  have  been  felt,  and  its  intro 
duction  into  mountainous  regions  like  Armenia  must  have 
been  immediately  followed  by  a  system  of  terracing,  or  at 
least  scarping  the  hillsides.  Pasture  and  meadow,  indeed, 
may  be  irrigated  even  when  the  surface  is  both  steep  and  irreg 
ular,  as  may  be  observed  abundantly  on  the  Swiss  as  well  as 
on  the  Piedinontese  slope  of  the  Alps ;  but  in  dry  climates, 
plough  land  and  gardens  on  hilly  grounds  require  terracing, 
both  for  supporting  the  soil  and  for  administering  water  by 
irrigation,  and  it  should  be  remembered  that  terracing,  of 
itself,  even  without  special  arrangements  for  controlling  the 
distribution  of  water,  prevents  or  at  least  checks  the  flow  of 
rain  water,  and  gives  it  time  to  sink  into  the  ground  instead 
of  running  off  over  the  surface. 

There  are  few  things  in  Continental  husbandry  which  sur 
prise  English  or  American  observers  so  much  as  the  extent  to 
which  irrigation  is  employed  in  agriculture,  and  that,  too,  on 
soils,  and  with  a  temperature,  where  their  own  experience 
would  have  led  them  to  suppose  it  would  be  injurious  to  vege 
tation  rather  than  beneficial  to  it.  The  summers  in  Northern 
Italy,  though  longer,  are  very  often  not  warmer  than  in  New 
England  ;  and  in  ordinary  years,  the  summer  rains  are  as  fre 
quent  and  as  abundant  in  the  former  country  as  in  the  latter. 
Yet  in  Piedmont  and  Lombardy,  irrigation  is  bestowed  upon 
almost  every  crop,  while  in  New  England  it  is  never  employed 
at  all  in  farming  husbandry,  or  indeed  for  any  purpose  except 
in  kitchen  gardens,  and  possibly,  in  rare  cases,  in  some  other 
small  branch  of  agricultural  industry.* 

*  The  necessity  of  irrigation  in  the  great  alluvial  plain  of  Northern 


368  IRRIGATION   IN    PALESTINE. 

The  summers  in  Egypt,  in  Syria,  and  in  Asia  Minor  and 
even  Rumelia,  are  almost  rainless.  In  such  climates,  the 
necessity  of  irrigation  is  obvious,  and  the  loss  of  the  ancient 
means  of  furnishing  it  readily  explains  the  diminished  fertility 
of  most  of  the  countries  in  question.*  The  surface  of  Pales- 
Italy  is  partly  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  superficial  stratum  of  fine 
earth  and  vegetable  mould  is  very  extensively  underlaid  by  beds  of  pebblos 
and  gravel  brought  down  by  mountain  torrents  at  a  remote  epoch.  The 
water  of  the  surface  soil  drains  rapidly  down  into  these  loose  beds,  and 
passes  off  by  subterranean  channels  to  some  unknown  point  of  discharge ; 
but  this  circumstance  alone  is  not  a  sufficient  solution.  Is  it  not  possible 
that,  the  habits  of  vegetables,  grown  in  countries  where  irrigation  has  been 
immemorially  employed,  have  been  so  changed  that  they  require  water 
under  conditions  of  soil  and  climate  where  their  congeners,  which  have 
not  been  thus  indulgently  treated,  do  not  ? 

There  are  some  atmospheric  phenomena  in  Northern  Italy,  which  an 
American  finds  it  hard  to  reconcile  with  what  he  has  observed  in  the 
United  States.  To  an  American  eye,  for  instance,  the  sky  of  Piedmont, 
Lombardy,  and  the  northern  coast  of  the  Mediterranean,  is  always  whitish 
and  curdled,  and  it  never  has  the  intensity  and  fathomless  depth  of  the 
blue  of  his  native  heavens.  And  yet  the  heat  of  the  sun's  rays,  as  meas 
ured  by  sensation,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  evaporation,  are  greater  than 
they  would  be  with  the  thermometer  at  the  same  point  in  America.  I 
have  frequently  felt  in  Italy,  with  the  mercury  below  60°  Fahrenheit,  and 
with  a  mottled  and  almost  opaque  sky,  a  heat  of  solar  irradiation  which 
I  can  compare  to  nothing  but  the  scorching  sensation  experienced  in 
America  at  a  temperature  twenty  degrees  higher,  during  the  intervals  be 
tween  showers,  or  before  a  rain,  when  the  clear  blue  of  the  sky  seems 
infinite  in  depth  and  transparency.  Such  circumstances  may  create  a 
necessity  for  irrigation  where  it  would  otherwise  be  superfluous,  if  not 
absolutely  injurious. 

In  speaking  of  the  superior  apparent  clearness  of  the  sky  in  America,  I 
confine  myself  to  the  concave  vault  of  the  heavens,  and  do  not  mean  to 
assert  that  terrestrial  objects  are  generally  visible  at  greater  distances  in 
the  United  States  than  in  Italy.  Indeed  I  am  rather  disposed  to  maintain 
the  contrary  ;  for  though  I  know  that  the  lower  strata  of  the  atmosphere 
in  Europe  never  equal  in  transparency  the  air  near  the  earth  in  New 
Mexico,  Peru,  and  Chili,  yet  I  think  the  accidents  of  the  coast  line  of  the 
Riviera,  as,  for  example,  between  Nice  and  La  Spezia,  and  those  of  the  in 
comparable  Alpine  parorama  seen  from  Turin,  are  distinguishable  at  greater 
distances  than  they  would  be  in  the  United  States. 

*  In  Egypt,  evaporation  and  absorption  by  the  earth  are  so  rapid,  that 


IRRIGATION   IN   PALESTINE.  369 

tine,  for  example,  is  composed,  in  a  great  measure,  of  rounded 
limestone  hills,  once,  no  doubt,  covered  with  forests.  These 
were  partially  removed  before  the  Jewish  conquest.*  "When 
the  soil  began  to  suffer  from  drought,  reservoirs  to  retain  the 
waters  of  winter  were  hewn  in  the  rock  near  the  tops  of  the 
hills,  and  the  declivities  were  terraced.  So  long  as  the  cisterns 
were  in  good  order,  and  the  terraces  kept  up,  the  fertility  of 
Palestine  was  unsurpassed,  but  when  misgovernment  and  for- 

all  annual  crops  require  irrigation  during  the  whole  period  of  their  growth. 
As  fast  as  the  water  retires  by  the  subsidence  of  the  annual  inundation,  the 
seed  is  sown  upon  the  still  moist  uncovered  soil,  and  irrigation  begins  at 
once.  Upon  the  Nile,  you  hear  the  creaking  of  the  water  wheels,  and 
sometimes  the  movement  of  steam  pumps,  through  the  whole  night,  while 
the  poorer  cultivators  unceasingly  ply  the  simple  shadoof,  or  bucket- and- 
sweep,  laboriously  raising  the  water  from  trough  to  trough  by  as  many  as 
six  or  seven  stages  when  the  river  is  low.  The  bucket  is  of  flexible  leather, 
with  a  stiff  rim,  and  is  emptied  into  the  trough,  not  by  inverting  it  like  a 
wooden  bucket,  but  by  putting  the  hand  beneath  and  pushing  the  bottom 
up  till  the  water  all  runs  out  over  the  brim,  or,  in  other  words,  by  turning 
the  vessel  inside  out. 

The  quantity  of  water  thus  withdrawn  from  the  Nile  is  enormous. 
Most  of  this  is  evaporated  directly  from  the  surface  or  the  superficial 
strata,  but  some  moisture  percolates  down  and  oozes  through  the  banks 
into  the  river  again,  while  a  larger  quantity  sinks  till  it  joins  the  slow  cur 
rent  of  infiltration  by  which  the  Nile  water  pervades  the  earth  of  the 
valley  to  the  distance,  at  some  points,  of  not  less  than  fifty  miles. 

*  "Forests,"  "woods,"  and  "groves,"  are  very  frequently  mentioned 
in  the  Old  Testament  as  existing  at  particular  places,  and  they  are  often 
referred  to  by  way  of  illustration,  as  familiar  objects.  "  Wood  "  is  twice 
spoken  of  as  a  material  in  the  New  Testament,  but  otherwise — at  least  ac 
cording  to  Cruden — not  one  of  the  above  words  occurs  in  that  volume. 

This  interesting  fact,  were  other  evidence  wanting,  would  go  far  to 
prove  that  a  great  change  had  taken  place  in  this  respect  between  the 
periods  when  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New  were  respectively  com 
posed  ;  for  the  scriptural  writers,  and  the  speakers  introduced  into  their 
narratives,  are  remarkable  for  their  frequent  allusions  to  the  natural 
objects  and  the  social  and  industrial  habits  which  characterized  their  ages 
and  their  country.  See  Appendix,  No.  42. 

Solomon  anticipated  Chevandier  in  the  irrigation  of  forest  trees :    u  I 
made  me  pools  of  water,  to  water  therewith  the  wood  that  bringeth  forth 
trees." — Ecdesiastes  ii,  6. 
24 


370  IRRIGATION    IN   IDUMJ3A. 

eign  and  intestine  war  occasioned  the  neglect  or  destruction 
of  these  works — traces  of  which  still  meet  the  traveller's  eye  at 
every  step, — when  the  reservoirs  were  broken  and  the  terrace 
walls  had  fallen  down,  there  was  no  longer  water  for  irrigation 
in  summer,  the  rains  of  winter  soon  washed  away  most  of  the 
thin  layer  of  earth  upon  the  rocks,  and  Palestine  was  reduced 
almost  to  the  condition  of  a  desert. 

The  course  of  events  has  been  the  same  in  Idumsea.  The 
observing  traveller  discovers  everywhere  about  Petra,  partic 
ularly  if  he  enters  the  city  by  the  route  of  "Wadi  Ksheibeh, 
very  extensive  traces  of  ancient  cultivation,  and  upon  the 
neighboring  ridges  are  the  ruins  of  numerous  cisterns  evidently 
constructed  to  furnish  a  supply  of  water  for  irrigation.*  In 

*  One  of  these,  upon  Mount  Hor,  two  stories  in  height,  is  still  in  such 
preservation  that  I  found  not  less  than  ten  feet  of  water  in  it  in  the  month 
of  June,  1851. 

The  brook  Ain  Musa,  which  runs  through  the  city  of  Petra  and  finally 
disappears  in  the  sands  of  Wadi  el  Araba,  is  a  considerable  river  in  winter, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  that  town  were  obliged  to  excavate  a  tunnel  through 
the  rock  near  the  right  bank,  just  above  the  upper  entrance  of  the  Sik,  to 
discharge  a  part  of  its  swollen  current.  The  sagacity  of  Dr.  Robinson 
detected  the  necessity  of  this  measure,  though  the  tunnel,  the  mouth  of 
which  was  hidden  by  brushwood,  was  not  discovered  till  some  time  after 
his  visit.  I  even  noticed  unequivocal  remains  of  a  sluice  by  which  the 
water  was  diverted  to  the  tunnel  near  the  arch  that  crosses  the  Sik.  Im 
mense  labor  was  also  expended  in  widening  the  natural  channel  at  several 
points  below  the  town,  to  prevent  the  damming  up  and  setting  back  of  the 
water — a  fact  I  believe  not  hitherto  noticed  by  travellers. 

The  Fellahheen  above  Petra  still  employ  the  waters  of  Ain  Musa  for 
irrigation,  and  in  summer  the  superficial  current  is  wholly  diverted  from 
its  natural  channel  for  that  purpose.  At  this  season,  the  bed  of  the  brook, 
which  is  composed  of  pebbles,  gravel,  and  sand,  is  dry  in  the  Sik  and 
through  the  town ;  but  the  infiltration  is  such  that  water  is  generally 
found  by  digging  to  a  small  depth  in  the  channel.  Observing  these  facts 
in  a  visit  to  Petra  in  the  summer,  I  was  curious  to  know  whether  the  sub 
terranean  waters  escaped  again  to  daylight,  and  I  followed  the  ravine 
below  the  town  for  a  long  distance.  Not  very  for  from  the  upper  entrance 
of  the  ravine,  arborescent  vegetation  appeared  upon  its  bottom,  and  as  soon 
as  the  ground  was  well  shaded,  a  thread  of  water  burst  out.  This  was 
joined  by  others  a  little  lower  down,  and,  at  the  distance  of  a  mile  from  the 
town,  a  strong  current  was  formed  and  ran  down  toward  Wadi  el  Araba. 


METEOROLOGICAL   EFFECTS   OF   IRRIGATION.  371 

primitive  ages,  the  precipitation  of  winter  in  these  hilly  coun 
tries  was,  in  great  part,  retained  for  a  time  in  the  superficial 
soil,  first  by  the  vegetable  mould  of  the  forests,  and  then  by 
the  artificial  arrangements  I  have  described.  The  water  im 
bibed  by  the  earth  was  partly  taken  up  by  direct  evaporation, 
partly  absorbed  by  vegetation,  and  partly  carried  down  by 
infiltration  to  subjacent  strata  which  gave  it  out  in  springs  at 
lower  levels,  and  thus  a  fertility  of  soil  and  a  condition  of  the 
atmosphere  were  maintained  sufficient  to  admit  of  the  dense 
population  that  once  inhabited  those  now  arid  wastes.  At 
present,  the  rain  water  runs  immediately  off  from  the  surface 
and  is  carried  down  to  the  sea,  or  is  drunk  up  by  the  sands  of 
the  wadis,  and  the  hillsides  which  once  teemed  with  plenty 
are  bare  of  vegetation,  and  seared  by  the  scorching  winds  of 
the  desert. 

In  Southern  Europe,  in  the  Turkish  Empire,  and  in  many 
other  countries,  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  surface  is,  if  not 
absolutely  flooded,  at  least  thoroughly  moistened  by  irrigation, 
a  great  number  of  times  in  the  course  of  every  season,  and  this, 
especially,  at  periods  when  it  would  otherwise  be  quite  dry, 
and  when,  too,  the  power  of  the  sun  and  the  capacity  of  the 
air  for  absorbing  moisture  are  greatest.  Hence  it  is  obvious 
that  the  amount  of  evaporation  from  the  earth  in  these  coun 
tries,  and,  of  course,  the  humidity  and  the  temperature  of  both 
the  soil  and  the  atmosphere  in  contact  with  it,  must  be  much 
affected  by  the  practice  of  irrigation.  The  cultivable  area  of 
Egypt,  or  the  space  accessible  to  cultivation,  between  desert 
and  desert,  is  more  than  seven  thousand  square  statute  miles. 
Much  of  the  surface,  though  not  out  of  the  reach  of  irrigation, 
lies  too  high  to  be  economically  watered,  and  irrigation  and 
cultivation  are  therefore  confined  to  an  area  of  five  or  six  thou 
sand  square  miles,  nearly  the  whole  of  which  is  regularly  and 
constantly  watered  when  not  covered  by  the  inundation,  ex 
cept  in  the  short  interval  between  the  harvest  and  the  rise  of 
the  waters.  For  nearly  half  of  the  year,  then,  irrigation  adds 
five  or  six  thousand  square  miles,  or  more  than  a  square  equa 
torial  degree,  to  the  evaporable  surface  of  the  Nile  valley,  or, 


372  METEOROLOGICAL   EFFECTS    OF   IRRIGATION. 

in  other  words,  more  than  decuples  the  area  from  which  an 
appreciable  quantity  of  moisture  would  otherwise  be  evap 
orated;  for  after  the  Nile  has  retired  within  its  banks,  its 
waters  by  no  means  cover  one  tenth  of  the  space  just  men 
tioned.*  The  fresh-water  canals  now  constructing,  in  connec- 

*  The  authorities  differ  as  to  the  extent  of  the  cultivable  and  the  culti 
vated  soil  of  Egypt.  Lippincott's,  or  rather  Thomas  and  Baldwin's,  Gaz 
etteer — a  work  of  careful  research— estimates  "the  whole  area  comprised 
in  the  valley  [below  the  first  cataract]  and  delta,"  at  11,000  square  miles. 
Smith's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  article  "Egypt,"  says:  "Egypt  has  a 
superficies  of  about  9,582  square  geographical  miles  of  soil,  which  the  Nile 
either  does  or  can  water  and  fertilize.  This  computation  includes  the 
river  and  lakes  as  well  as  sundry  tracts  which  can  be  inundated,  and  the 
whole  space  either  cultivated  or  fit  for  cultivation  is  no  more  than  about 
5,626  square  miles."  By  geographical  mile  is  here  meant,  I  suppose,  the 
nautical  mile  of  sixty  to  an  equatorial  degree,  or  about  2,025  yards.  The 
whole  area,  then,  by  this  estimate,  is  12,682  square  statute  or  English 
miles,  that  of  the  space  "cultivated  or  fit  for  cultivation,"  7,447.  Smith's 
Dictionary  of  Greek  and,  Roman  Geography,  article  "jEgyptus,"  gives 
2,255  square  miles  as  the  area  of  the  valley  between  Syene  and  the  bifur 
cation  of  the  Nile,  exclusive  of  the  Fayoorn,  which  is  estimated  at  340. 
The  area  of  the  Delta  is  stated  at  1,976  square  miles  between  the  main 
branches  of  the  river,  and,  including  the  irrigated  lands  east  and  west  of 
those  branches,  at  4,500  square  miles.  This  latter  work  does  not  inform  us 
whether  thesa  are  statute  or  nautical  miles,  but  nautical  miles  must  be 
intended. 

Other  writers  give  estimates  differing  considerably  from  those  just 
cited.  The  latest  computations  I  have  seen  are  those  in  the  first  volume 
of  Kremer's  ^Egypten,  1863.  This  author  (pp.  6,  7)  assigns  to  the  Delta  an 
area  of  200  square  German  geographical  miles  (fifteen  to  the  degree);  to  all 
Lower  Egypt,  including,  of  course,  the  Delta,  400  such  miles.  .These  num 
bers  are  equal,  respectively,  to  4,239  and  8,478  square  statute  miles,  and 
the  great  lagoons  are  embraced  in  the  nreas  computed.  Upper  Egypt 
(above  Cairo)  is  said  (p.  11)  to  contain  4,000,000  feddan  of  culturflaclie,  or 
cultivable  land.  The  feddan  is  stated  (p.  37)  to  contain  7,333  square  piks, 
the  pik  being  75  centimetres,  and  it  therefore  corresponds  almost  exactly 
to  the  English  acre.  Hence,  according  to  Kremer,  the  cultivable  soil  of 
"Upper  Egypt  is  6,250  square  statute  miles,  or  twice  as  much  as  the  whole 
area  of  the  valley  between  Syene  and  the  bifurcation  of  the  Nile,  accord 
ing  to  Smith's  Dictionary  of  Greek  and  Roman  Geography.  I  suspect  that 
4,000,000  feddan  is  erroneously  given  as  the  cultivable  area  of  Upper 
Egypt  alone,  when  in  fact  it  should  be  taken  for  the  arable  surface  of  both 


IRRIGATION  IN    EGYPT.  373 

tion  with  the  works  for  the  Suez  canal,  will  not  only  restore 
the  long  abandoned  fields  east  of  the  Nile,  but  add  to  the  arable 
soil  of  Egypt  hundreds  of  square  miles  of  newly  reclaimed 
desert,  and  thus  still  further  increase  the  climatic  effects  of 
irrigation.* 

The  Kile  receives  not  a  single  tributary  in  its  course  through 
Egypt ;  there  is  not  so  much  as  one  living  spring  in  the  whole 
land,t  and,  with  the  exception  of  a  narrow  strip  of  coast,  where 
the  annual  precipitation  is  said  to  amount  to  six  inches,  the 
fall  of  rain  in  the  territory  of  the  Pharaohs  is  not  two  inches 
in  the  year.  The  subsoil  of  the  whole  valley  is  pervaded  with 
moisture  by  infiltration  from  the  Nile,  and  water  can  every 
where  be  found  at  the  depth  of  a  few  feet.  "Were  irrigation 
suspended,  and  Egypt  abandoned,  as  in  that  case  it  must  be, 

Lower  and  Upper  Egypt ;  for  from  the  statistical  tables  in  the  same  vol 
ume,  it  appears  that  3,317,125  feddan,  or  5,253  square  statute  miles,  were 
cultivated,  in  both  geographical  divisions,  in  the  year  referred  to  in  the 
tables,  the  date  of  which  is  not  stated. 

The  area  which  the  Nile  would  now  cover  at  high  water,  if  left  to  itself, 
is  greater  than  in  ancient  times,  because  the  bed  of  the  river  has  been  ele 
vated,  and  consequently  the  lateral  spread  of  the  inundation  increased.  See 
SMITH'S  Dictionary  of  Geography,  article  "./Egyptus."  But  the  industry 
of  the  Egyptians  in  the  days  of  the  Pharaohs  and  the  Ptolomies  carried 
the  Nile-water  to  large  provinces  which  have  now  been  long  abandoned 
and  have  relapsed  into  the  condition  of  a  desert.  "Anciently,"  observes 
the  writer  of  the  article  "Egypt"  in  Smith's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible, 
"2,735  square  miles  more  [about  3,700  square  statute  miles]  may  have 
been  cultivated.  In  the  best  days  of  Egypt,  probably  all  the  land  was 
cultivated  that  could  be  made  available  for  agricultural  purposes,  and 
hence  we  may  estimate  the  ancient  arable  area  of  that  country  at  not  less 
than  11,000  square  statute  miles,  or  fully  double  its  present  extent." 

*  A  canal  has  been  constructed,  and  new  ones  are  in  progress,  to  con 
vey  water  from  the  Nile  to  the  city  of  Suez,  and  to  various  points  on  the 
line  of  the  ship  canal,  with  the  double  purpose  of  supplying  fresh  water  to 
the  inhabitants  and  laborers,  and  of  irrigating  the  adjacent  soil.  The  area 
of  land  which  may  be  thus  reclaimed  and  fertilized  is  very  large,  but  the 
actual  quantity  which  it  will  be  found  economically  expedient  to  bring 
under  cultivation  cannot  now  be  determined. 

t  The  so-called  spring  at  Ileliopolis  is  only  a  thread  of  water  infiltrated 
from  the  Nile  or  the  canals. 


374:  IRRIGATION   IN   EGYPT. 

to  the  operations  of  nature,  there  is  no  doubt  that  trees,  the 
roots  of  which  penetrate  deeply,  would  in  time  establish  them 
selves  on  the  deserted  soil,  fill  the  valley  with  verdure,  and 
perhaps  at  last  temper  the  climate,  and  even  call  down  abun 
dant  rain  from  the  heavens.*  But  the  immediate  effect  of 
discontinuing  irrigation  would  be,  first,  an  immense  reduction 
of  the  evaporation  from  the  valley  in  the  dry  season,  and  then 
a  greatly  augmented  dryness  and  heat  of  the  atmosphere. 
Even  the  almost  constant  north  wind — the  strength  of  which 
would  be  increased  in  consequence  of  these  changes — would 
little  reduce  the  temperature  of  the  narrow  cleft  between  the 
burning  mountains  which,  hem  in  the  channel  of  the  Nile,  so 
that  a  single  year  would  transform  the  most  fertile  of  soils  to 
the  most  barren  of  deserts,  and  render  uninhabitable  a  terri 
tory  that  irrigation  makes  capable  of  sustaining  as  dense  a 
population  as  has  ever  existed  in  any  part  of  the  world. f 
Whether  man  found  the  valley  of  the  Nile  a  forest,  or  such  a 
waste  as  I  have  just  described,  we  do  not  historically  know. 
In  either  case,  he  has  not  simply  converted  a  wilderness  into 

*  The  date  and  the  doum  palm,  the  sont  and  many  other  acacias,  the 
caroub,  the  sycamore,  and  other  trees,  grow  well  in  Egypt  without  irri 
gation,  and  would  doubtless  spread  through  the  entire  valley  in  a  few 
years. 

t  Wilkinson  has  shown  that  the  cultivable  soil  of  Egypt  has  not  been 
diminished  by  encroachment  of  the  desert  sands,  or  otherwise,  but  that,  on 
the  contrary,  it  must  have  been  increased  since  the  age  of  the  Pharaohs. 
The  Gotha  Almanac  for  1862  states  the  population  of  Egypt  in  1859  at 
5,125,000  souls  ;  but  this  must  be  a  great  exaggeration,  even  supposing  the 
estimate  to  include  the  inhabitants  of  Nubia,  and  of  much  other  territory 
not  geographically  belonging  to  Egypt.  In  general,  the  population  of  that 
country  has  been  estimated  at  something  more  than  three  millions,  or 
about  six  hundred  to  the  square  mile  ;  but  with  a  better  government  and 
better  social  institutions,  the  soil  would  sustain  a  much  greater  number, 
and  in  fact  it  is  believed  that  in  ancient  times  its  inhabitants  were  twice, 
perhaps  even  thrice,  as  numerous  as  at  present. 

"Wilkinson  (Handbook  for  Travellers  in  Egypt,  p.  10)  observes  that  the 
total  population,  which  two  hundred  years  ago  was  estimated  at  4,000,000, 
amounted  till  lately  only  to  about  1,800,000  souls,  having  been  reduced 
since  1800  from  2,500,000  to  that  number. 


QUANTITY   OF   WATER  APPLIED.  375 

a  garden,  but  has  unquestionably  produced  extensive  climatic 
change.* 

The  fields  of  Egypt  are  more  regularly  watered  than  those 
of  any  other  country  bordering  on  the  Mediterranean,  except 
the  rice  grounds  in  Italy,  and  perhaps  the  mcvrcite  or  winter 
meadows  of  Lombardy ;  but  irrigation  is  more  or  less  employed 
throughout  almost  the  entire  basin  of  that  sea,  and  is  every 
where  attended  with  effects  which,  if  less  in  degree,  are  anal 
ogous  in  character  to  those  resulting  from  it  in  Egypt.  In 
general,  it  may  be  said  that  the  soil  is  nowhere  artificially 
watered  except  when  it  is  so  dry  that  little  moisture  would  be 
evaporated  from  it,  and,  consequently,  every  acre  of  irrigated 
ground  is  so  much  added  to  the  evaporable  surface  of  the 
country.  When  the  supply  of  water  is  unlimited,  it  is  allowed, 
after  serving  its  purpose  on  one  field,  to  run  into  drains,  canals, 
or  rivers.  But  in  most  regions  where  irrigation  is  regularly 
employed,  it  is  necessary  to  economize  the  water ;  after  pass 
ing  over  or  through  one  parcel  of  ground,  it  is  conducted  to 

*  Hitter  supposes  Egypt  to  have  been  a  sandy  desert  when  it  was  first 
occupied  by  man.  ''  The  first  inhabitant  of  the  sandy  valley  of  the  Nile  was 
a  desert  dweller,  as  his  neighbors  right  and  left,  the  Libyan,  the  nomade 
Arab,  still  are.  But  the  civilized  people  of  Egypt  transformed,  by  canals, 
the  waste  into  the  richest  granary  of  the  world  ;  they  liberated  themselves 
from  the  shackles  of  the  rock  and  sand  desert,  in  the  inidst  of  which,  by  a 
wise  distribution  of  the  fluid  through  the  solid  geographical  form,  by  irri 
gation  in  short,  they  created  a  region  of  culture  most  rich  in  historical 
monuments." — Einleitung  zur  allgemcinen  vcrgleicliendcn  Geographic,  pp. 
165,  160. 

This  view  seems  to  me  highly  improbable ;  for  though,  by  canals  and 
embankments,  man  has  done  much  to  modify  the  natural  distribution  of 
the  waters  of  the  Nile,  and  possibly  has  even  transferred  its  channel  from 
one  side  of  the  valley  to  the  other,  yet  the  annual  inundation  is  not  his 
work,  and  the  river  must  have  overflowed  its  banks  and  carried  spon 
taneous  vegetation  with  its  waters,  as  well  before  as  since  Egypt  was  first 
occupied  by  the  human  family.  There  is,  indeed,  some  reason  to  suppose 
that  man  lived  upon  the  banks  of  the  Nile  when  its  channel  was  much 
lower,  and  the  spread  of  its  inundations  much  narrower  than  at  present ; 
but  wherever  its  flood  reached,  there  the  forest  would  propagate  itself, 
and  its  shores  are  much  more  likely  to  have  been  morasses  than  sands. 


376  EXTENT   OF   LANDS    IRRIGATED. 

another ;  no  more  is  withdrawn  from  the  canals  at  any  one 
point  than  is  absorbed  by  the  soil  it  irrigates,  or  evaporated 
from  it,  and,  consequently,  it  is  not  restored  to  liquid  circula 
tion,  except  by  infiltration  or  precipitation.  We  are  safe,  then, 
in  saying  that  the  humidity  evaporated  from  any  artificially 
watered  soil  is  increased  by  a  quantity  bearing  a  large  propor 
tion  to  the  whole  amount  distributed  over  it ;  for  most  even 
of  that  which  is  absorbed  by  the  earth  is  immediately  given 
out  again  either  by  vegetables  or  by  evaporation. 

It  is  not  easy  to  ascertain  precisely  either  the  extent  of  sur 
face  thus  watered,  or  the  amount  of  water  supplied,  in  any 
given  country,  because  these  quantities  vary  with  the  character 
of  the  season ;  but  there  are  not  many  districts  in  Southern  Eu 
rope  where  the  management  of  the  arrangements  for  irrigation 
is  not  one  of  the  most  important  branches  of  agricultural  labor. 
The  eminent  engineer  Lonibardiiii  describes  the  system  of  irri 
gation  in  Lombardy  as,  u  every  clay  in  summer,  diffusing 
over  550,000  hectares  of  land  45,000,000  cubic  metres  of  water, 
which  is  equal  to  the  entire  volume  of  the  Seine,  at  an  ordi 
nary  flood,  or  a  rise  of  three  metres  above  the  hydrometer  at 
the  bridge  of  La  Tournelle  at  Paris."  *  Kiel  states  the  quan 
tity  of  land  irrigated  in  the  former  kingdom  of  Sardinia,  includ 
ing  Savoy,  in  1856,  at  240,000  hectares,  or  not  much  less  than 
600,000  acres.  This  is  about  four  thirteenths  of  the  cultivable 
soil  of  the  kingdom.  According  to  the  same  author,  the  irri 
gated  lands  in  France  did  not  exceed  100,000  hectares,  or 
247,000  acres,  while  those  in  Lombardy  amounted  to  450,000 
hectares,  more  than  1,100,000  acres.f  In  these  three  states 
alone,  then,  there  were  more  than  three  thousand  square  miles 
of  artificially  watered  land,  and  if  we  add  the  irrigated  soils 
of  the  rest  of  Italy,  of  the  Mediterranean  islands,  of  the  Span 
ish  peninsula,  of  Turkey  in  Europe  and  in  Asia  Minor,  of 
Syria,  of  Egypt  and  the  remainder  of  Northern  Africa,  we 
shall  see  that  irrigation  increases  the  evaporable  surface  of  the 

*  Memorie  sui  progctti  per  Vcstensione  delV  Irrigazione,  etc.,  il  Politec- 
m'c0,  for  January,  1863,  p.  6. 

t  NIEL,  1} Agriculture  des  J^tats  Sardes,  p.  232. 


QUANTITY    OF    WATER   APPLIED.  377 

Mediterranean  basin  by  a  quantity  bearing  no  inconsiderable 
proportion  to  the  area  naturally  covered  by  water  within  it. 
As  near  as  can  be  ascertained,  the  amount  of  water  applied 
to  irrigated  lands  is  scarcely  anywhere  less  than  the  total  pre 
cipitation  during  the  season  of  vegetable  growth,  and  in  gen 
eral  it  much  exceeds  that  quantity.  In  grass  grounds  and  in 
field  culture  it  ranges  from  27  or  28  to  60  inches,  while  in 
smaller  crops,  tilled  by  hand  labor,  it  is  sometimes  carried  as 
high  as  300  inches.*  The  rice  grounds  and  the  marcite  of 

*  NIEL,  Agriculture  dcs  Etats  Sardes,  p.  237.  Lombardini's  compu 
tation  just  given  allows  eighty-one  cubic  metres  per  day  to  the  hectare, 
which,  supposing  the  season  of  irrigation  to  be  one  hundred  days,  is  equal 
to  a  precipitation  of  thirty-two  inches.  But  in  Lombardy,  water  is  applied 
to  some  crops  during  a  longer  period  than  one  hundred  days ;  and  in  the 
marcite  it  flows  over  the  ground  even  in  winter. 

According  to  Boussingault  (Economie  Rvrale,  ii,  p.  246)  grass  grounds 
ought  to  receive,  in  Germany,  twenty-one  centimetres  of  water  per  week, 
and  with  less  than  half  that  quantity  it  is  not  advisable  to  incur  the  expense 
of  supplying  it.  The  ground  is  irrigated  twenty-five  or  thirty  times,  and 
if  the  full  quantity  of  twenty-one  centimetres  is  applied,  it  receives  about 
two  hundred  inches  of  water,  or  six  times  the  total  amount  of  precipitation. 
Puvis,  quoted  by  Boussingault,  after  much  research  comes  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  a  proper  quantity  is  twenty  centimetres  applied  twenty-five  or 
thirty  times,  which  corresponds  with  the  estimate  just  stated.  Puvis 
adds — and,  as  our  author  thinks,  with  reason — that  this  amount  might  be 
doubled  without  disadvantage. 

Boussingault  observes  that  rain  water  is  vastly  more  fertilizing  than  the 
water  of  irrigating  canals,  and  therefore  the  supply  of  the  latter  must  be 
greater.  This  is  explained  partly  by  the  different  character  of  the  sub 
stances  held  in  solution  or  suspension  by  the  waters  of  the  earth  and  of  the 
sky,  partly  by  the  higher  temperature  of  the  latter,  and,  possibly,  partly 
also  by  the  mode  of  application — the  rain  being  finely  divided  in  its  fall  or 
by  striking  plants  on  the  ground,  river  water  flowing  in  a  continuous  sheet. 

The  temperature  of  the  water  is  thought  even  more  important  than  its 
composition.  The  sources  which  irrigate  the  marcite  of  Lombardy — 
meadows  so  fertile  that  less  than  an  acre  furnishes  grass  for  a  cow  the 
whole  year — are  very  warm.  The  ground  watered  by  them  never  freezes, 
and  a  first  crop,  for  soiling,  is  cut -from  it  in  January  or  February.  The 
Canal  Cavour,  just  now  commenced — which  is  to  take  its  supply  from  the 
Po  at  Ohivasso,  fourteen  or  fifteen  miles  below  Turin — will  furnish  water 
of  much  higher  fertilizing  power  than  that  derived  from  the  Dora  Baltea 


378  EFFECTS    OF    IRRIGATION. 

Lombardy  are  not  included  in  these  estimates  of  the  amount 
of  water  applied.  Arrangements  are  concluded,  and  new 
plans  proposed,  for  an  immense  increase  of  the  lands  fertilized 
by  irrigation  in  France  and  Italy,  and  there  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  the  artificially  watered  soil  of  the  latter  country 
will  be  doubled,  that  of  France  quadrupled,  before  the  end  of 
this  century.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  by  these  operations 
man  is  exercising  a  powerful  influence  on  soil,  on  vegetable 
and  animal  life,  and  on  climate,  and  hence  that  in  this,  as 
in  many  other  fields  of  industry,  he  is  truly  a  geographical 
agency.* 

and  the  Sesia,  both  because  it  is  warmer,  and  because  it  transports  a  more 
abundant  and  a  richer  sediment  than  the  latter  streams,  which  are  fed  by 
Alpine  icefields  and  melting  snows,  and  which  flow,  for  long  distances,  in 
channels  ground  smooth  and  bare  by  ancient  glaciers,  and  not  now  con 
tributing  much  vegetable  mould  or  fine  slime  to  their  waters. 

*  It  belongs  rather  to  agriculture  than  to  geography  to  discuss  the 
quality  of  the  crops  obtained  by  irrigation,  or  the  permanent  effects  pro 
duced  by  it  on  the  productiveness  of  the  soil.  There  is  no  doubt,  how 
ever,  that  all  crops  which  can  be  raised  without  watering  are  superior  in 
flavor  and  in  nutritive  power  to  those  grown  by  the  aid  of  irrigation. 
Garden  vegetables,  particularly,  profusely  watered,  are  so  insipid  as  to  be 
hardly  eatable.  Wherever  irrigation  is  practised,  there  is  an  almost  irre 
sistible  tendency,  especially  among  ignorant  cultivators,  to  carry  it  to 
excess ;  and  in  Piedmont  and  Lombardy,  if  the  supply  of  water  is  abundant, 
it  is  so  liberally  applied  as  sometimes  not  only  to  injure  the  quality  of  the 
product,  but  to  drown  the  plants  and  diminish  the  actual  weight  of 
the  crop. 

Professor  Liebig,  in  his  Modern  Agriculture,  says  :  "  There  is  not  to  be 
found  in  chemistry  a  more  wonderful  phenomenon,  one  which  more  con 
founds  all  human  wisdom,  than  is  presented  by  the  soil  of  a  garden  or  field. 
By  the  simplest  experiment,  any  one  may  satisfy  himself  that  rain  water 
filtered  through  field  or  garden  soil  does  not  dissolve  out  a  trace  of  potash, 
silicic  acid,  ammonia,  or  phosphoric  acid.  The  soil  does  not  give  up  to  the 
water  one  particle  of  the  food  of  plants  which  it  contains.  The  most  con 
tinuous  rains  cannot  remove  from  the  field,  except  mechanically,  any  of 
the  essential  constituents  of  its  fertility." 

"  The  soil  not  only  retains  firmly  all  the  food  of  plants  which  is  actually 
in  it,  but  its  power  to  preserve  all  that  may  be  useful  to  them  extends 
much  farther.  If  rain  or  other  water  holding  in  solution  ammonia,  potash, 
and  phosphoric  and  silicic  acids,  be  brought  in  contact  with  soil,  these  sub- 


WATER   WITHDRAWN   FOR   IRRIGATION.  379 

The  quantity  of  water  artificially  withdrawn  from  running 
streams  for  the  purpose  of  irrigation  is  such  as  very  sensibly 
to  affect  their  volume,  and  it  is,  therefore,  an  important  ele 
ment  in  the  geography  of  rivers.  Brooks  of  no  trifling  current 

stances  disappear  almost  immediately  from  the  solution ;  the  soil  with 
draws  them  from  the  water.  Only  such  substances  are  completely  with 
drawn  by  the  soil  as  are  indispensable  articles  of  food  for  plants ;  all  others 
remain  wholly  or  in  part  in  solution." 

The  first  of  the  paragraphs  just  quoted  is  not  in  accordance  with  the 
alleged  experience  of  agriculturists  in  those  parts  of  Italy  where  irrigation 
is  most  successfully  applied.  They  believe  that  the  constituents  of  vege 
table  growth  are  washed  out  of  the  soil  by  excessive  and  long-continued 
watering.  They  consider  it  also  established  as  a  fact  of  observation,  that 
water  which  has  flowed  through  or  over  rich  ground  is  far  more  valuable 
for  irrigation  than  water  from  the  same  source,  which  has  not  been  im 
pregnated  with  fertilizing  substances  by  passing  through  soils  containing 
them ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  water,  rich  in  the  elements  of  vege 
tation,  parts  with  them  in  serving  to  irrigate  a  poor  soil,  and  is  therefore 
less  valuable  as  a  fertilizer  of  lower  grounds  to  which  it  may  afterward  be 
conducted. 

The  practice  of  irrigation — except  in  mountainous  countries  where 
springs  and  rivulets  are  numerous — is  attended  with  very  serious  econo 
mical,  social,  and  political  evils.  The  construction  of  canals  and  their 
immensely  ramified  branches,  and  the  grading  and  scarping  of  the  ground 
to  be  watered,  are  always  expensive  operations,  and  they  very  often  require 
an  amount  of  capital  which  can  be  commanded  only  by  the  state,  by 
moneyed  corporations,  or  by  very  wealthy  proprietors ;  the  capacity  of 
the  canals  must  be  calculated  with  reference  to  the  area  intended  to  be 
irrigated,  and  when  they  and  their  branches  are  once  constructed,  it  IB 
very  difficult  to  extend  them,  or  to  accommodate  any  of  their  original  ar 
rangements  to  changes  in  the  condition  of  the  soil,  or  in  the  modes  or 
objects  of  cultivation ;  the  flow  of  the  water  being  limited  by  the  abun 
dance  of  the  source  or  the  capacity  of  the  canals,  the  individual  proprietor 
cannot  be  allowed  to  withdraw  water  at  will,  according  to  his  own  private 
interest  or  convenience,  but  both  the  time  and  the  quantity  of  supply  must 
be  regulated  by  a  general  system  applicable,  as  far  as  may  be,  to  the  whole 
area  irrigated  by  the  same  canal,  and  every  cultivator  must  conform  his 
industry  to  a  plan  which  may  be  quite  at  variance  with  his  special  objects 
or  with  his  views  of  good  husbandry.  The  clashing  interests  and  the 
jealousies  of  proprietors  depending  on  the  same  means  of  supply  are  a 
source  of  incessant  contention  and  litigation,  and  the  caprices  or  partial 
ities  of  the  officers  who  control,  or  of  contractors  who  farm  the  canals, 


380  WATER    WITHDRAWN   FOR    IRRIGATION. 

are  often  wholly  diverted  from  their  natural  channels  to  sup 
ply  the  canals,  and  their  entire  mass  of  water  completely 
absorbed,  so  that  it  does  not  reach  the  river  which  it  naturally 
feeds,  except  in  such  proportion  as  it  is  conveyed  to  it  by  infil 
tration.  Irrigation,  therefore,  diminishes  great  rivers  in  warm 
countries  by  cutting  off  their  sources  of  supply  as  well  as  by 
direct  abstraction  of  water  from  their  channels.  We  have  just 
seen  that  the  system  of  irrigation  in  Lombardy  deprives  the 
Po  of  a  quantity  of  water  equal  to  the  total  delivery  of  the 
Seine  at  ordinary  flood,  or,  in  other  words,  of  the  equivalent 
of  a  tributary  navigable  for  hundreds  of  miles  by  vessels  of 
considerable  burden.  The  new  canals  commenced  and  pro 
jected  will  greatly  increase  the  loss.  The  water  required  for 
irrigation  in  Egypt  is  less  than  would  be  supposed  from  the 
exceeding  rapidity  of  evaporation  in  that  arid  climate  ;  for  the 
soil  is  thoroughly  saturated  during  the  inundation,  and  infil 
tration  from  the  Nile  continues  to  supply  a  considerable 
amount  of  humidity  in  the  dryest  season.  Lin  ant  Bey  com 
puted  that  twenty-nine  cubic  metres  per  day  sufficed  to  irri 
gate  a  hectare  in  the  Delta.*  This  is  equivalent  to  a  fall  of 
rain  of  two  millimetres  and  nine  tenths  per  day,  or,  if  we  sup 
pose  water  to  be  applied  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  days  during 
the  dry  season,  to  a  total  precipitation  of  435  millimetres, 
about  seventeen  inches  and  one  third.  Taking  the  area  of 
actually  cultivated  soil  in  Egypt  at  the  low  estimate  of 
3,600,000  acres,  and  the  average  amount  of  water  daily  applied 

load  not  unfrequently  to  ruinous  injustice  toward  individual  landholders. 
These  circumstances  discourage  the  division  of  the  soil  into  small  proper 
ties,  and  there  is  a  constant  tendency  to  the  accumulation  of  large  estates 
of  irrigated  land  in  the  hands  of  great  capitalists,  and  consequently  to  the 
dispossession  of  the  small  cultivators,  who  pass  from  the  condition  of 
owners  of  the  land  to  that  of  hireling  tillers.  The  farmers  are  no  longer 
yeomen,  but  peasants.  Having  no  interest  in  the  soil  which  composes 
their  country,  they  are  virtually  expatriated,  and  the  middle  class,  which 
ought  to  constitute  the  real  physical  and  moral  strength  of  the  land,  ceases 
to  exist  as  a  rural  estate,  and  is  found  only  among  the  professional,  the 
mercantile,  and  the  industrial  population  of  the  cities. 
*  BOTJSSINGATJLT,  Economie  Rurale,  ii,  pp.  248,  249. 


EFFECTS   OF   IRRIGATION    ON    HEALTH.  381 

in  botli  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt  at  twelve  hundredthe  of  an 
inch  in  depth,  we  have  an  abstraction  of  61,000,000  cubic 
yards,  which — the  mean  daily  delivery  of  the  Kile  being  in 
round  numbers  320,000,000  cubic  yards — is  nearly  one  fifth 
of  the  average  quantity  of  water  contributed  to  the  Mediter 
ranean  by  that  river. 

Irrigation,  as  employed  for  certain  special  purposes  in 
Europe  and  America,  is  productive  of  very  prejudicial  climatic 
effects.  I  refer  particularly  to  the  cultivation  of  rice  in  the 
Slave  States  of  the  American  Union  and  in  Italy.  The  climate 
of  the  Southern  States  is  not  necessarily  unhealthy  for  the 
white  man,  but  he  can  scarcely  sleep  a  single  night  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  rice  grounds  without  being  attacked  by  a  dan 
gerous  fever.*  The  neighborhood  of  the  rice  fields  is  less 
pestilential  in  Lombardy  and  Piedmont  than  in  South  Caro 
lina  and  Georgia,  but  still  very  insalubrious  to  both  man  and 
beast.  "  Not  only  does  the  population  decrease  where  rice  is 
grown,"  says  Escourrou  Milliago,  "  but  even  the  flocks  are 
attacked  by  typhus.  In  the  rice  grounds,  the  soil  is  divided 
into  compartments  rising  in  gradual  succession  to  the  level  of 
the  irrigating  canal,  in  order  that  the  water,  after  having 
flowed  one  field,  may  be  drawn  oft'  to  another,  and  thus  a 
single  current  serve  for  several  compartments,  the  lowest  field, 
of  course,  still  being  higher  than  the  ditch  which  at  last  drains 
both  it  and  the  adjacent  soil.  This  arrangement  gives  a  cer- 

*  The  cultivation  of  rice  is  so  prejudicial  to  health  everywhere  that 
nothing  but  the  necessities  of  a  dense  population  can  justify  the  sacrifice 
of  life  it  costs  in  countries  where  it  is  pursued. 

It  has  been  demonstrated  by  actual  experiment,  that  even  in  Missis 
sippi,  cotton  can  be  advantageously  raised  by  the  white  man  without 
danger  to  health  ;  and  in  fact,  a  great  deal  of  the  cotton  brought  to  the 
Vlcksburg  market  for  some  years  past  has  been  grown  exclusively  by 
white  labor.  There  is  no  reason  why  the  cultivation  of  cotton  should  be 
a  more  unhealthy  occupation  in  America  than  it  is  in  other  countries 
where  it  was  never  dreamed  of  as  dangerous,  and  no  well-informed 
American,  in  the  Slave  States  or  out  of  them,  believes  that  the  abolition 
of  slavery  in  the  South  would  permanently  diminish  the  cotton  crop  of 
those  States. 


382  SALINE    DEPOSITS    FROM    IRRIGATION. 

tain  force  of  hydrostatic  pressure  to  the  water  with  which  tlio 
rice  is  irrigated,  and  the  infiltration  from  these  fields  is  said  to 
extend  through  neighboring  grounds,  sometimes  to  the  distance 
of  not  less  than  a  myriametre,  or  six  English  miles,  and  to  be 
destructive  to  crops  and  even  trees  reached  by  it.  Land  thus 
affected  can  no  longer  be  employed  for  any  purpose  but  grow 
ing  rice,  and  when  prepared  for  that  crop,  it  propagates  still 
further  the  evils  under  which  it  had  itself  suffered,  and,  of 
course,  the  mischief  is  a  growing  one."  * 

The  attentive  traveller  in  Egypt  and  Nubia  cannot  fail  to 
notice  many  localities,  generally  of  small  extent,  where  the 
soil  is  rendered  infertile  by  an  excess  of  saline  matter  in  its 
composition.  In  many  cases,  perhaps  in  all,  these  barren  spots 
lie  rather  above  the  level  usually  "flooded  by  the  inundations 
of  the  Nile,  and  yet  they  exhibit  traces  of  former  cultivation. 
Recent  observations  in  India,  a  notice  of  which  I  find  in  an 
account  of  a  meeting  of  the  Asiatic  Society  in  the  Athengeum 
of  December  20, 1862,  No.  1834,  suggest  a  possible  explanation 
of  this  fact.  At  this  meeting,  Professor  Medlicott  read  an  essay 
on  "  the  saline  efflorescence  called  '  Reh '  and  '  Kuller,' ': 
which  is  gradually  invading  many  of  the  most  fertile  districts 
of  Northern  and  Western  India,  and  changing  them  into  sterile 
deserts.  It  consists  principally  of  sulphate  of  soda  (Glauber's 
salts),  with  varying  proportions  of  common  salt.  Mr.  Medli 
cott  pronounces  "  these  salts  (which,  in  small  quantities  are 
favorable  to  fertility  of  soil)  to  be  the  gradual  result  of  concen 
tration  by  evaporation  of  river  and  canal  waters,  which  contain 
them  in  very  minute  quantities,  and  with  which  the  lands  are 
either  irrigated  or  occasionally  overflowed."  The  river  inun 
dations  in  hot  countries  usually  take  place  but  once  in  a  year, 
and,  though  the  banks  remain  submerged  for  days  or  even 
weeks,  the  water  at  that  period,  being  derived  principally  from 
rains  and  snows,  must  be  less  highly  charged  with  mineral 
matter  than  at  lower  stages,  and  besides,  it  is  always  in  mo 
tion.  The  water  of  irrigation,  on  the  other  hand,  is  applied 

*  IJItalie  d  propos  de  V Exposition  de  Paris,  p.  93. 


INUNDATIONS   AND  TORRENTS.  883 

for  many  months  in  succession,  it  is  drawn  from  rivers  at  the 
seasons  when  their  proportion  of  salts  is  greatest,  and  it  either 
sinks  into  the  superficial  soil,  carrying  with  it  the  saline  sub 
stances  it  holds  in.  solution,  or  is  evaporated  from  the  surface, 
leaving  them  upon  it.  Hence  irrigation  must  impart  to  the 
Boil  more  salts  than  natural  inundation.  The  sterilized 
grounds  in  Egypt  and  Nubia  lying  above  the  reach  of  the 
floods,  as  I  have  said,  we  may  suppose  them  to  have  been  first 
cultivated  in  that  remote  antiquity  when  the  Nile  valley  re 
ceived  its  earliest  inhabitants.  They  must  have  been  artifi 
cially  irrigated  from  the  beginning ;  they  may  have  been 
under  cultivation  many  centuries  before  the  soil  at  a  lower 
level  was  invaded  by  man,  and  hence  it  is  natural  that  they 
should  be  more  strongly  impregnated  with  saline  matter  than 
fields  which  arc  exposed  every  year,  for  some  weeks,  to  the 
action  of  running  water  so  nearly  pure  that  it  would  be  more 
likely  to  dissolve  salts  than  to  deposit  them. 

INUNDATIONS    AND    TORRENTS. 

Iii  pointing  out  in  a  former  chapter  the  evils  which  have 
resulted  from  the  too  extensive  destruction  of  the  forests,  I 
dwelt  at  some  length  on  the  increased  violence  of  river  inun 
dations,  and  especially  on  the  devastations  of  torrents,  in  coun 
tries  improvidently  deprived  of  their  woods,  and  I  spoke  of 
the  replanting  of  the  forests  as  the  only  effectual  method  of 
preventing  the  frequent  recurrence  of  disastrous  floods.  There 
are  many  regions  where,  from  the  loss  of  the  superficial  soil, 
from  financial  considerations,  and  from  other  causes,  the  res 
toration  of  the  woods  is  not,  under  present  circumstances,  to 
be  hoped  for.  Even  where  that  measure  is  feasible  and  in 
actual  process  of  execution,  a  great  number  of  years  must 
elapse  before  the  action  of  the  destructive  causes  in  question 
can  be  arrested  or  perhaps  even  sensibly  mitigated  by  it.  Be 
sides  this,  leaving  out  of  view  the  objections  urged  by  Bel- 
grand  and  his  followers  to  the  generally  received  opinions 
concerning  the  beneficial  influence  of  the  forest  as  respects 


384:  RIVER    EMBANKMENTS. 

river  inundations — for  no  one  disputes  its  importance  in  pre 
venting  the  formation  and  limiting  the  ravages  of  mountain 
torrents — floods  will  always  occur  in  years  of  excessive  precip 
itation,  whether  the  surface  of  the  soil  he  generally  cleared  or 
generally  wooded. 

Physical  improvement  in  this  respect,  then,  cannot  be  con 
fined  to  preventive  measures,  but,  in  countries  subject  to  dam 
age  by  inundation,  means  must  be  contrived  to  obviate  dangers 
and  diminish  injuries  to  which  human  life  and  all  the  works 
of  human  industry  will  occasionally  be  exposed,  in  spite  of 
every  effort  to  lessen  the  frequency  of  their  recurrence  by 
acting  directly  on  the  causes  that  produce  them.  As  every 
civilized  country  is,  in  some  degree,  subject  to  inundation  by 
the  overflow  of  rivers,  the  evil  is  a  familiar  one,  and  needs  no 
general  description.  In  discussing  this  branch  of  the  subject, 
therefore,  I  may  confine  myself  chiefly  to  the  means  that  have 
been  or  may  be  employed  to  resist  the  force  and  limit  the 
ravages  of  floods,  which,  left  wholly  unrestrained,  wTould  not 
only  inflict  immense  injury  upon  the  material  interests  of  man, 
but  produce  geographical  revolutions  of  no  little  magnitude. 

a.  IZiver  Einbankments. 

The  most  obvious  and  doubtless  earliest  method  of  pre 
venting  the  escape  of  river  waters  from  their  natural  channels, 
and  the  overflow  of  fields  and  towns  by  their  spread,  is  that  of 
raised  embankments  along  their  course.  The  necessity  of  such 
embankments  usually  arises  from  the  gradual  elevation  of  the 
bed  of  running  streams  in  consequence  of  the  deposit  of  the 
earth  and  gravel  they  are  charged  with  in  high  water ;  and,  as 
we  have  seen,  this  elevation  is  rapidly  accelerated  when  the 
highlands  around  the  headwaters  of  rivers  are  cleared  of  their 
forests.  When  a  river  is  embanked  at  a  given  point,  and,  con 
sequently,  the  water  of  its  floods,  which  would  otherwise 
spread  over  a  wide  surface,  is  confined  within  narrow  limits, 
the  velocity  of  the  current  and  its  transporting  power  are  aug 
mented,  and  its  burden  of  sand  and  gravel  is  deposited  at  some 


KIVER   EMBANKMENTS.  385 

lower  point,  where  the  rapidity  of  its  flow  is  checked  by  a 
diminution  in  the  inclination  of  the  bed,  by  a  wider  channel, 
or  finally  by  a  lacustrine  or  marine  basin  which  receives  its 
waters.  "Wherever  it  lets  fall  solid  material,  its  channel  is 
raised  in  consequence,  and  the  declivity  of  the  whole  bed 
between  the  head  of  the  embankment  and  the  slack  of  the 
stream  is  reduced.  Hence  the  current,  at  first  accelerated  by 
confinement,  is  afterward  checked  by  the  mechanical  resist 
ance  of  the  matter  deposited,  and  by  the  diminished  inclina 
tion  of  its  channel,  and  then  begins  again  to  let  fall  the  earth 
it  holds  in  suspension,  and  to  raise  its  bed  at  the  point  where 
its  overflow  had  been  before  prevented  by  embankment.  The 
bank  must  now  be  raised  in  proportion,  and  these  processes 
would  be  repeated  and  repeated  indefinitely,  had  not  nature 
provided  a  remedy  in  floods,  which  sweep  out  recent  deposits, 
burst  the  bonds  of  the  river  and  overwhelm  the  adjacent  coun 
try  with  final  desolation,  or  divert  the  current  into  a  new 
channel,  destined  to  become,  in  its  turn,  the  scene  of  a  similar 
struggle  between  man  and  the  waters. 

Few  rivers,  like  the  Nile,  more  than  compensate  by  the 
fertilizing  properties  of  their  wrater  and  their  slime  for  the 
damage  they  inay  do  in  inundations,  and,  consequently,  there 
are  few  whose  floods  are  not  an  object  of  dread,  few  whose 
encroachments  upon  their  banks  are  not  a  source  of  constant 
anxiety  and  expense  to  the  proprietors  of  the  lands  through 
which  they  flow.  River  dikes,  for  confining  the  spread  of 
currents  at  higli  water,  are  of  great  antiquity  in  the  East,  and 
those  of  the  Po  and  its  tributaries  were  begun  before  we  have 
any  trustworthy  physical  or  political  annals  of  the  provinces 
upon  their  borders.  From  the  earliest  ages,  the  Italian  hy 
draulic  engineers  have  stood  in  the  front  rank  of  their  profes 
sion,  and  the  Italian  literature  of  this  branch  of  material  im 
provement  is  exceedingly  voluminous.  But  the  countries  for 
which  I  write  have  no  rivers  like  the  Po,  no  plains  like  those 
of  Lombardy,  and  the  dangers  to  which  the  inhabitants  of 
English  and  American  river  banks  are  exposed  are  more  nearly 
analogous  to  those  that  threaten  the  soil  and  population  in  the 
25 


3SG  FLOODS   OF   THE   AEDECHE. 

valleys  and  plains  of  France,  than  to  the  perils  and  losses  of 
the  Lombard.  The  writings  of  the  Italian  hydrographers,  too, 
though  rich  in  professional  instruction,  are  less  accessible  to 
foreigners  and  \ess  adapted  to  popular  use  than  those  of  French 
engineers.*  For  these  reasons  I  shall  take  my  citations  prin 
cipally  from  French  authorities,  though  I  shall  occasionally 
allude  to  Italian  writers  on  the  floods  of  the  Tiber,  of  the  Arno, 
and  some  other  Italian  streams  which  much  resemble  those  of 
the  rivers  of  England  and  the  United  States. 

b.  Floods  of  the  Ardtche. 

The  floods  of  mountain  streams  are  attended  with  greater 
immediate  danger  to  life  and  property  than  those  of  rivers  of 
less  rapid  flow,  because  their  currents  are  more  impetuous,  and 
they  rise  more  suddenly  and  with  less  previous  warning.  At 
the  same  time,  their  ravages  are  confined  within  narrower 
limits,  the  waters  retire  sooner  to  their  accustomed  channel, 
and  the  danger  is  more  quickly  over,  than  in  the  case  of  inun 
dations  of  larger  rivers.  The  Ardeche,  which  has  given  its 
name  to  a  department  in  France,  drains  a  basin  of  600,238 
acres,  or  a  little  less  than  nine  hundred  and  thirty-eight  square 
miles.  Its  remotest  source  is  about  seventy-five  miles,  in  a 
straight  line,  from  its  junction  with  the  Rhone,  and  springs  at 
an  elevation  of  four  thousand  feet  above  that  point.  At  the 
lowest  stage  of  the  river,  the  bed  of  the  Chassezac,  its  largest 
and  longest  tributary,  is  in  many  places  completely  dry  on  the 

*  The  very  valuable  memoirs  of  Lombardini,  Cenni  idrogrnfi  sulla 
Lombardia,  Intorno  al  sistema  idraulico  del  Po,  and  other  papers  on  simi 
lar  subjects,  were  published  in  periodicals  little  known  out  of  Italy;  and  the 
Idraulica  Pratica  of  Mari  has  not,  I  believe,  been  translated  into  French 
or  English.  These  works,  and  other  sources  of  information  equally  inac 
cessible  out  of  Italy,  have  been  freely  used  by  Baumgarten,  in  a  memoir 
entitled  Notice  sur  Ics  Rivieres  de  la  Loiribardie,  in  the  Annales  des  Fonts 
et  Chaussees,  1847,  ler  semestre,  pp.  129  et  seqq.,  and  by  Dumont,  Des 
Travaux  Publics  dans  leurs  Rapports  avec  P  Agriculture,  note,  viii,  pp.  269 
et  seqq.  For  the  convenience  of  my  readers,  I  shall  use  these  two  articles 
instead  of  the  original  authorities  on  which  they  are  founded. 


FLOODS   OF   THE   ARDECHE.  387 

surface — the  water  being  sufficient  only  to  supply  the  subter 
ranean  channels  of  infiltration — and  the  Ardeche  itself  is 
almost  everywhere  fordable,  even  below  the  month  of  the 
Chassezac.  But  in  floods,  the  river  has  sometimes  risen  more 
than  sixty  feet  at  the  Pont  d'Arc,  a  natural  arch  of  two  hun 
dred  feet  chord,  which  spans  the  stream  below  its  junction 
with  all  its  important  affluents.  At  the  height  of  the  inunda 
tion  of  1827,  the  quantity  of  water  passing  this  point — after 
deducting  thirty  per  cent,  for  material  transported  with  the 
current  and  for  irregularity  of  flow — was  estimated  at  8,845 
cubic  yards  to  the  second,  and  between  twelve  at  noon  on  the 
lOtli  of  September  of  that  year  and  ten  o'clock  the  next 
morning,  the  water  discharged  through  the  passage  in  question 
amounted  to  more  than  450,000,000  cubic  yards.  This  quan 
tity,  distributed  equally  through  the  basin  of  the  river,  would 
cover  its  entire  area  to  a  depth  of  more  than  five  inches. 

The  Ardeche  rises  so  suddenly  that,  in  the  inundation  of 
1846,  the  women  who  were  washing  in  the  bed  of  the  river 
had  not  time  to  save  their  linen,  and  barely  escaped  with  their 
lives,  though  they  instantly  fled  upon  hearing  the  roar  of  the 
approaching  flood.  Its  waters  and  those  of  its  affluents  fall 
almost  as  rapidly,  for  in  less  than  twenty-four  hours  after  the 
rain  lias  ceased  in  the  Cevennes,  where  it  rises,  the  Ardeche 
returns  within  its  ordinary  channel,  even  at  its  junction  with 
the  Rhone.  In  the  flood  of  1772,  the  water  at  La  Beaume  de 
Ruoms,  on  the  Beaume,  a  tributary  of  the  Ardeche,  rose  thirty- 
five  feet  above  low  water,  but  the  stream  was  again  fordable 
on  the  evening  of  the  same  day.  The  inundation  of  1827  was, 
in  this  respect,  exceptional,  for  it  continued  three  days,  during 
which  period  the  Ardeche  poured  into  the  Rhone  1,305,000,000 
cubic  yards  of  water. 

The  Nile  delivers  into  the  sea  101,000  cubic  feet  or  3,741 
cubic  yards  per  second,  on  an  average  of  the  whole  year.* 

*  -Sir  John  F.  "W.  Herscliel,  citing  Talabot  as  his  authority,  Physical 
Geography  (24). 

In  an  elaborate  paper  on  "Irrigation,"  printed  in  the  United  States 
Patent  Report  for  1860,  p.  169,  it  is  stated  that  the  volume  of  water  poured 


388  FLOODS    OF   THE    ARDECHE. 

This  is  equal  to  323,222,400  cubic  yards  per  day.  In  a  single 
day  of  flood,  then,  the  Ardeche,  a  river  too  insignificant  to  be 
known  except  in  the  local  topography  of  France,  contributed 
to  the  Rhone  once  and  a  half,  and  for  three  consecutive  days 
once  and  one  third,  as  much  as  the  average  delivery  of  the 
Nile  during  the  same  periods,  though  the  basin  of  the  latter 
river  contains  500,000  square  miles  of  surface,  or  more  than 
five  hundred  times  as  much  as  that  of  the  former. 

The  average  annual  precipitation  in  the  basin  of  the  Ar 
deche  is  not  greater  than  in  many  other  parts  of  Europe,  but 
excessive  quantities  of  rain  frequently  fall  in  that  valley  in  the 
autumn.  On  the  9th  of  October,  1827,  there  fell  at  Joyeuse, 
on  the  Beaume,  no  less  than  thirty-one  inches  between  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  midnight.  Such  facts  as  this  ex 
plain  the  extraordinary  suddenness  and  violence  of  the  floods 
of  the  Ardeche,  and  the  basins  of  many  other  tributaries  of 
the  Tlhone  exhibit  meteorological  phenomena  not  less  remark 
able.*  The  inundation  of  the  10th  September,  1857,  was 
accompanied  with  a  terrific  hurricane,  which  passed  along  the 

into  the  Mediterranean  by  the  Nile  in  twenty-four  hours,  at  low  water,  is 
150,566,392,368  cubic  metres ;  at  high  water,  705,514,667,440  cubic  metres. 
Taking  the  mean  of  these  two  numbers,  the  average  daily  delivery  of  the 
Nile  would  be  428,081,059,808  cubic  metres,  or  more  than  550,000,000,000 
cubic  yards.  There  is  some  enormous  mistake,  probably  a  typographical 
error,  in  this  statement,  which  makes  the  delivery  of  the  Nile  seventeen 
hundred  times  as  great  as  computed  by  Talabot,  and  many  times  more 
than  any  physical  geographer  has  ever  estimated  the  quantity  supplied  by 
all  the  rivers  on  the  face  of  the  globe. 

*  The  Drac,  a  torrent  emptying  into  the  Isfcre  a  little  below  Grenoble, 
has  discharged  5,200,  the  Isere,  which  receives  it,  7,800  cubic  yards,  and 
the  Durance  an  equal  quantity,  per  second. — MONTLUISAXT,  Note  sur  les 
DessecJiemcnts,  etc.,  Annales  des  Ponts  et  Chaussees,  1833,  2me  semestre, 
p.  288. 

The  Hoods  of  some  other  French  rivers  scarcely  foil  behind  those  of  the 
Rhone.  The  Loire,  above  Roanne,  has  a  basin  of  2,471  square  miles,  or 
about  twice  and  a  half  the  area  of  that  of  the  Ardeche.  In  some  of  its 
inundations  it  has  delivered  above  9,500  cubic  yards  per  second. — BEL- 
GRAND,  De  ^Influence  des  Forets,  etc.,  Annales  des  Ponts  et  Chaussect,  1854, 
ler  slmestre.  p.  15,  note. 


FLOODS   OF   THE   AEDECHE.  381 

eastern  slope  of  the  high  grounds  where  the  Ardeche  and  sev 
eral  other  western  affluents  of  the  Rhone  take  their  rise.  The 
wind  tore  up  all  the  trees  in  its  path,  and  the  rushing  torrents 
bore  their  trunks  down  to  the  larger  streams,  which  again  trans 
ported  them  to  the  Rhone  in  such  rafts  that  one  might  al 
most  have  crossed  that  river  by  stepping  from  trunk  to  trunk.* 
The  Rhone,  therefore,  is  naturally  subject  to  great  and  sudden 
inundations,  and  the  same  remark  may  be  applied  to  most  of 
the  principal  rivers  of  France,  because  the  geographical  char 
acter  of  all  of  them  is  approximately  the  same. 

The  height  and  violence  of  the  inundations  of  most  great 
rivers  are  determined  by  the  degree  in  which  the  floods  of  the 
different  tributaries  are  coincident  in  time.  Were  all  the  afflu 
ents  of  the  Rhone  to  pour  their  highest  annual  floods  into  its 
channel  at  once,  were  a  dozen  Niles  to  empty  themselves  into 
its  bed  at  the  same  moment,  its  water  would  rise  to  a  height 
and  rush  with  an  impetus  that  would  sweep  into  the  Mediter 
ranean  the  entire  population  of  its  banks,  and  all  the  works 
that  man  has  erected  upon  the  plains  which  border  it.  But 
such  a  coincidence  can  never  happen.  The  tributaries  of  this 
river  run  in  very  different  directions,  and  some  of  them  are 
swollen  principally  by  the  melting  of  the  snows  about  their 
sources,  others  almost  exclusively  by  heavy  %rains.  When  a 
damp  southeast  wind  blows  up  the  valley  of  the  Ardeche,  its 
moisture  is  condensed,  and  precipitated  in  a  deluge  upon  the 
mountains  which  embosom  the  headwaters  of  that  stream, 
thus  producing  a  flood,  while  a  neighboring  basin,  the  axis  of 

*  The  original  forests  in  wliich  the  basin  of  the  Ardeche  was  rich  have 
been  rapidly  disappearing,  for  many  years,  and  the  terrific  violence  of  the 
inundations  \vhich  are  now  laying  it  waste  is  ascribed,  by  the  ablest  inves 
tigators,  to  that  cause.  In  an  article  inserted  in  the  Annales  Forestieres 
for  1843,  quoted  by  Hohenstein,  Der  Wald,  p.  17V,  it  is  said  that  about  one 
third  of  the  area  of  the  department  had  already  become  absolutely  barren, 
in  consequence  of  clearing,  and  that  the  destruction  of  the  woods  was  still 
going  on  with  great  rapidity.  Itfew  torrents  were  constantly  forming, 'and 
they  were  estimated  to  have  covered  more  than  70,000  acres  of  good 
or  one  eighth  of  the  surface  of  the  department,  with  sand  and  gravel. 


390  DAMAGE    DONE  BY   FLOODS. 

which  lies  transversely  or  obliquely  to  that  of  the  Ardeche,  is 
not  at  all  affected.* 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  damage  occasioned  by  such  floods 
as  I  have  described  must  be  almost  incalculable,  and  it  is  by 
no  means  confined  to  the  effects  produced  by  overflow  and  the 
mechanical  force  of  the  superficial  currents.  In  treating  of 
the.  devastations  of  torrents  in  a  former  chapter,  I  confined 
myself  principally  to  the  erosion  of  surface  and  the  transporta 
tion  of  mineral  matter  to  lower  grounds  by  them.  The  gen 
eral  action  of  torrents,  as  there  shown,  tends  to  the  ultimate 
elevation  of  their  beds  by  the  deposit  of  the  earth,  gravel,  and 
stone  conveyed  by  them ;  but  until  they  have  thus  raised  their 
outlets  so  as  sensibly  to  diminish  the  inclination  of  their  chan 
nels — and  sometimes  when  extraordinary  floods  give  the  tor 
rents  momentum  enough  to  sweep  away  the  accumulations 
which  they  have  themselves  heaped  up — the  swift  flow  of  their 
currents,  aided  by  the  abrasion  of  the  rolling  rocks  and  gravel, 
scoops  their  beds  constantly  deeper,  and  they  consequently  not 
only  undermine  their  banks,  but  frequently  sap  the  most  solid 
foundations  which  the  art  of  man  can  build  for  the  support  of 
bridges  and  hydraulic  structures,  f 


*  "  There  is  no  example  of  a  coincidence  between  great  floods  of  the 
Ardeche  and  of  the  Ehone,  all  the  known  inundations  of  the  former  hav 
ing  taken  place  when  the  latter  Avas  very  low." — HAKDIGNY,  Memoire  sur 
les  Inondations  des  Rivieres  de  1} Ardeche,  p.  26. 

I  take  this  occasion  to  acknowledge  myself  indebted  to  the  interesting 
memoir  just  quoted  for  all  the  statements  I  make  respecting  the  floods  of 
the  Ardeche,  except  the  comparison  of  the  volume  of  its  waters  with  that 
of  the  Nile,  and  the  computation  with  respect  to  the  capacity  required  for 
reservoirs  to  be  constructed  in  its  basin. 

t  In  some  cases  where  the  bed  of  rapid  Alpine  streams  is  composed  of 
very  hard  rock — as  is  the  case  in  many  of  the  valleys  once  filled  by  ancient 
glaciers— and  especially  where  they  are  fed  by  glaciers  not  overhung  by 
crumbling  cliffs,  the  channel  may  remain  almost  unchanged  for  centuries. 
This  is  observable  in  many  of  the  tributaries  of  the  Dora  Baltea,  which 
drains  the  valley  of  the  Aosta.  Several  of  these  small  rivers  are  spanned 
by  more  or  less  perfect  Roman  bridges — one  of  which,  that  over  the  Lys  at 
Pont  St.  Martin,  is  still  in  good  repair  and  in  constant  use,  An  examination 


SCOOPING    OUT   AND   FILLING   UP    OF   KIVER   BEDS.  39 1 

In  the  inundation  of  1857,  the  Ardeche  destroyed  a  stone 
bridge  near  La  Beaume,  which  had  been  bnilt  about  eighty 
years  before.  The  resistance  of  the  piers,  which  were  erected 
on  piles,  the  channel  at  that  point  being  of  gravel,  produced 
an  eddying  current  that  washed  away  the  bed  of  the  river 
above  them,  and  the  foundation,  thus  deprived  of  lateral  sup 
port,  yielded  to  the  weight  of  the  bridge,  and  the  piles*  and 
piers  fell  up  stream. 

By  a  carious  law  of  compensation,  the  stream  which,  at 
flood,  scoops  out  cavities  in  its  bed,  often  fills  them  up  again 
as  soon  as  the  diminished  velocity  of  the  current  allows  it  to 
let  fall  the  sand  and  gravel  with  which  it  is  charged,  so  that 
when  the  waters  return  to  their  usual  channel,  the  bottom 
shows  no  sign  of  having  been  disturbed.  In  a  flood  of  the 

o  O 

Escontay,  a  tributary  of  the  Ehone,  in  1846,  piles  driven  six 
teen  feet  into  its  gravelly  bed  for  the  foundation  of  a  pier  were 
torn  up  and  carried  off,  and  yet,  when  the  river  had  fallen  to 
low-water  mark,  the  bottom  at  that  point  appeared  to  have 
been  raised  higher  than  it  was  before  the  flood,  by  new  de 
posits  of  sand  and  gravel,  while  the  cut  stones  of  the  half-built 
pier  were  found  buried  to  a  great  depth  in  the  excavation 
which  the  water  had  first  washed  out.  The  gravel  with  which 
rivers  thus  restore  the  level  of  their  beds  is  principally  derived 
from  the  crushing  of  the  rocks  brought  down  by  the  mountain 
torrents,  and  the  destructive  effects  of  inundations  are  im 
mensely  diminished  by  this  reduction  of  large  stones  to  minute 
fragments.  If  the  blocks  hurled  down  from  the  cliffs  were 
transported  unbroken  to  the  channels  of  large  rivers,  the  me 
chanical  force  of  their  movement  would  be  irresistible.  They 
would  overthrow  the  strongest  barriers,  spread  themselves 

of  the  rocks  on  which  the  abutments  of  this  and  some  other  similar  struc 
tures  are  founded,  and  of  the  channels  of  the  rivers  they  cross,  shows  that 
the  beds  of  the  streams  cannot  have  been  much  elevated  or  depressed  since 
the  bridges  were  built.  In  other  cases,  as  at  the  outlet  of  the  Val  Tournanche 
at  Chatillon,  where  a  single  rib  of  a  Roman  bridge  still  remains,  there  is 
nothing  to  forbid  the  supposition  that  the  deep  excavation  of  the  channel 
may  have  been  partly  effected  at  a  much  later  period.  See  App.^  No.  45. 


392  CRUSHING  FORCE  OF  TORRENTS. 

over  a  surface  as  wide  as  the  flow  of  the  waters,  and  convert 
the  most  smiling  valleys  into  scenes  of  the  wildest  desolation. 

c.   Crushing  Force  of  Torrents. 

There  are  few  operations  of  nature  where  the  effect  seems 
more  clisproportioned  to  the  cause  than  in  the  comminution  of 
rock  in  the  channel  of  swift  waters.  Igneous  rocks  are  gen 
erally  so  hard  as  to  be  wrought  with  great  difficulty,  and  they 
bear  the  weight  of  enormous  superstructures  without  yielding 
to  the  pressure ;  but  to  the  torrent  they  are  as  wheat  to  the  mill 
stone.  The  streams  which  pour  down  the  southern  scarp  of  the 
Mediterranean  Alps  along  the  Riviera  di  Ponente,  near  Genoa, 
have  short  courses,  and  a  brisk  walk  of  a  couple  of  hours  or 
even  less  takes  you  from  the  sea  beach  to  the  headspring  of 
many  of  them.  In  their  heaviest  floods,  they  bring  rounded 
masses  of  serpentine  quite  down  to  the  sea,  but  at  ordinary 
high  water  their  lower  course  is  charged  only  with  finely 
divided  particles  of  that  rock.  Hence,  while,  near  their 
sources,  their  channels  are  filled  with  pebbles  and  angular 
fragments,  intermixed  with  a  little  gravel,  the  proportions  are 
reversed  near  their  mouths,  and,  just  above  the  points  where 
their  outlets  are  partially  choked  by  the  rolling  shingle  of  the 
beach,  their  beds  are  composed  of  sand  and  gravel  to  the 
almost  total  exclusion  of  pebbles.  The  greatest  depth  of  the 
basin  of  the  Ardeche  is  seventy-five  miles,  but  most  of  its  trib 
utaries  have  a  much  shorter  course.  "  These  affluents,"  says 
Mardigny,  "  hurl  into  the  bed  of  the  Ardeche  enormous  blocks 
of  rock,  which  this  river,  in  its  turn,  bears  onward,  and  grinds 
down,  at  high  water,  so  that  its  current  rolls  only  gravel  at  its 
confluence  with  the  Rhone."  * 

*  Memoire  sur  les  Inondations  des  Rivieres  de  VArdeche,  p.  16.  "  The 
terrific  roar,  the  thunder  of  the  raging  torrents  proceeds  principally  from 
the  stones  which  are  rolled  along  in  the  bed  of  the  stream.  This  move 
ment  is  attended  with  such  powerful  attrition  that,  in  the  Southern  Alps, 
the  atmosphere  of  valleys  where  the  limestone  contains  bitumen,  has,  at 
the  time  of  floods,  the  marked  bituminous  smell  produced  by  rubbing 


INUNDATIONS   OF   1856.  393 

Guglielmini  argued  that  the  gravel  and  sand  of  the  beds 
of  running  streams  were  derived  from  the  trituration  of  rocks 
by  the  action  of  the  currents,  and  inferred  that  this  action  was 
generally  sufficient  to  reduce  hard  rock  to  sand  in  its  passage 
from  the  source  to  the  outlet  of  rivers.  Frisi  controverted  this 
opinion,  and  maintained  that  river  sand  was  of  more  ancient 
origin,  and  he  inferred  from  experiments  in  artificially  grinding 
stones  that  the  concussion,  friction,  and  attrition  of  rock  in  the 
channel  of  running  waters  were  inadequate  to  its  comminution, 
though  he  admitted  that  these  same  causes  might  reduce  sili- 
cious  sand  to  a  fine  powder  capable  of  transportation  to  the 
sea  by  the  currents.'55'  Frisi's  experiments  were  tried  upon 
rounded  and  polished  river  pebbles,  and  prove  nothing  with 
regard  to  the  action  of  torrents  upon  the  irregular,  more  or 
less  weathered,  and  often  cracked  and  shattered  rocks  which 
lie  loose  in  the  ground  at  the  head  of  mountain  valleys.  The 
fury  of  the  waters  and  of  the  wind  which  accompanies  them 
in  the  floods  of  the  French  Alpine  torrents  is  such,  that  large 
blocks  of  stone  are  hurled  out  of  the  bed  of  the  stream  to 
the  height  of  twelve  or  thirteen  feet.  The  impulse  of  masses 
driven  with  such  force  overthrows  the  most  solid  masonry, 
and  their  concussion  cannot  fail  to  be  attended  with  the  crush 
ing  of  the  rocks  themselves. f 

d.  Inundations  of  1856  in  France. 

The  month  of  May,  1856,  was  remarkable  for  violent  and 
almost  uninterrupted  rains,  and  most  of  the  river  basins  of 
France  were  inundated  to  an  extraordinary  height.  In  the 
valleys  of  the  Loire  and  its  affluents,  about  a  million  of  acres, 
including  many  towns  and  villages,  were  laid  under  water, 
and  the  amount  of  pecuniary  damage  was  almost  incal 
culable.  J  The  flood  was  not  less  destructive  in  the  valley  of 

pieces  of  such  limestone  together." — WESSELY,  Die  OesterreicMschen  Alpen- 
Idnder,  i,  p.  113.    See  Appendix,  No.   46. 

*  FRISI,  Del  modo  di  regolare  i  Fiumi  e  i  Torrenti,  pp.  4-19. 

t  SURELL,  ifitude  sur  les  Torrents,  pp.  31-36. 

t  CHAMPION,  Les  Inondations  en  France,  iii,  p.  156,  note. 


394:  INUNDATIONS   OF    1856. 

the  Eh  one,  and  in  fact  an  invasion  by  a  hostile  army  could 
hardly  have  been  more  disastrous  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
plains  than  was  this  terrible  deluge.  There  had  been  a  flood 
of  this  latter  river  in  the  year  1840,  which,  for  height  and 
quantity  of  water,  was  almost  as  remarkable  as  that  of  1856, 
but  it  took  place  in  the  month  of  November,  when  the  crop8 
had  all  been  harvested,  and  the  injury  inflicted  by  it  upon 
agriculturists  was,  therefore,  of  a  character  to  be  less  severely 
and  less  immediately  felt  than  the  consequences  of  the  inunda 
tion  of  1856.* 

In  the  fifteen  years  between  these  two  great  floods,  the 
population  and  the  rural  improvements  of  the  river  valleys 
had  much  increased,  common  roads,  bridges,  and  railways  had 
been  multiplied  and  extended,  telegraph  lines  had  been  con 
structed,  all  of  which  shared  in  the  general  ruin,  and  hence 
greater  and  more  diversified  interests  were  affected  by  the 
catastrophe  of  1856  than  by  any  former  like  calamity.  The 
great  flood  of  1840  had  excited  the  attention  and  roused  the 
sympathies  of  the  French  people,  and  the  subject  was  invested 
with  new  interest  by  the  still  more  formidable  character  of  the 
inundations  of  1856.  It  was  felt  that  these  scourges  had  ceased 
to  be  a  matter  of  merely  local  concern,  for,  although  they  bore 
most  heavily  on  those  whose  homes  and  fields  were  situated 
within  the  immediate  reach  of  the  swelling  waters,  yet  they 
frequently  destroyed  harvests  valuable  enough  to  be  a  matter 
of  national  interest,  endangered  the  personal  security  of  the 
population  of  important  political  centres,  interrupted  com 
munication  for  days  and  even  weeks  together  on  great  lines  of 

*  Notwithstanding  this  favorable  circumstance,  the  damage  done  by 
the  inundation  of  1840  in  the  valley  of  the  Ehone  was  estimated  at  seventy- 
two  millions  of  francs. — CHAMPION,  Les  Inondations  en  France,  iv,  p.  124. 

Several  smaller  floods  of  the  Rhone,  experienced  at  a  somewhat  earlier 
season  of  the  year  in  1846,  occasioned  a  loss  of  forty-five  millions  of  francs. 
"What  if,"  says  Dumont,  "instead  of  happening  in  October,  that  is  be 
tween  harvest  and  seedtime,  they  had  occurred  before  the  crops  were  se 
cured  ?  The  damage  would  have  been  counted  by  hundreds  of  millions." 
— DCS  Travaux  Publics,  p.  99,  note. 


THE   FOREST   AS  A  PROTECTION  AGAINST  INUNDATIONS.       395 

traffic  and  travel — thus  severing  as  it  were  all  Southwestern 
France  from  the  rest  of  the  empire — and  finally  threatened  to 
produce  great  and  permanent  geographical  changes.  The 
well-being  of  the  whole  commonwealth  was  seen  to  be  in 
volved  in  preventing  the  recurrence,  and  in  limiting  the  range 
of  such  devastations.  The  Government  encouraged  scientific 
investigation  of  the  phenomena  and  their  laws.  Their  causes, 
their  history,  their  immediate  and  remote  consequences,  and 
the  possible  safeguards  to  be  employed  against  them,  have 
been  carefully  studied  by  the  most  eminent  physicists,  as  well 
as  by  the  ablest  theoretical  and  practical  engineers  of  France. 
Many  hitherto  unobserved  facts  have  been  collected,  many 
new  hypotheses  suggested,  and  many  plans,  more  or  less  origi 
nal  in  character,  have  been  devised  for  combating  the  evil ; 
but  thus  far,  the  most  competent  judges  are  not  well  agreed  as 
to  the  mode,  or  even  the  possibility,  of  applying  a  remedy. 

e.  Remedies  against  Inundations. 

Perhaps  110  one  point  has  been  more  prominent  in  the  dis 
cussions  than  the  influence  of  the  forest  in  equalizing  and 
regulating  the  flow  of  the  water  of  precipitation.  As  wre  have 
already  seen,  opinion  is  still  somewhat  divided  on  this  subject, 
but  the  conservative  action  of  the  woods  in  this  respect  has 
been  generally  recognized  by  the  public  of  France,  and  the 
Government  of  the  empire  has  made  this  principle  the  basis  of 
important  legislation  for  the  protection  of  existing  forests,  and 
for  the  formation  of  new.  The  clearing  of  woodland,  and  the 
organization  and  functions  of  a  police  for  its  protection,  are 
regulated  by  a  law  bearing  date  June  18th,  1859,  and  pro 
vision  was  made  for  promoting  the  restoration  of  private 
woods  by  a  statute  adopted  on  the  28th  of  July,  1860.  The 
former  of  these  laws  passed  the  legislative  body  by  a  vote  of 
246  against  4,  the  latter  with  but  a  single  negative  voice. 
The  influence  of  the  government,  in  a  country  where  the  throne 
is  so  potent  as  in  France,  would  account  for  a  large  majority, 
but  when  it  is  considered  that  both  laws,  the  former  especially, 


396  CHARACTER   AND   EFFECT    OF   THE    NEW    MEASURES. 

interfere  very  materially  with  the  rights  of  private  domain, 
the  almost  entire  unanimity  with  which  they  were  adopted  is 
proof  of  a  very  general  popular  conviction,  that  the  protection 
and  extension  of  the  forests  is  a  measure  more  likely  than  any 
other  to  check  the  violence,  if  not  to  prevent  the  recurrence,  of 
destructive  inundations.  The  law  of  July  28th,  1860,  appropri 
ated  10,000,000  francs,  to  be  expended,  at  the  rate  of  1,000,000 
francs  per  year,  in  executing  or  aiding  the  replanting  of  woods. 
It  is  computed  that  this  appropriation  will  secure  the  creation 
of  new  forest  to  the  extent  of  about  250,000  acres,  or  one  elev 
enth  part  of  the  soil  where  the  restoration  of  the  forest  is 
thought  feasible  and,  at  the  same  time,  specially  important  as 
a  security  against  the  evils  ascribed  in  a  great  measure  to  its 
destruction. 

The  provisions  of  the  laws  in  question  are  preventive  rather 
than  remedial ;  but  some  immediate  effect  may  be  expected  to 
result  from  them,  particularly  if  they  are  accompanied  with 
certain  other  measures,  the  suggestion  of  which  has  been 
favorably  received.  The  strong  repugnance  of  the  moun 
taineers  to  the  application  of  a  system  which  deprives  them 
of  a  part  of  their  pasturage — for  the  absolute  exclusion  of 
domestic  animals  is  indispensable  to  the  maintenance  of  an 
existing  forest  and  to  the  formation  of  a  new — is  the  most 
formidable  obstacle  to  the  execution  of  the  laws  of  1859-'60. 
It  is  proposed  to  compensate  this  loss  by  a  cheap  system  of 
irrigation  of  lower  pasture  grounds,  consisting  in  little  more 
than  in  running  horizontal  furrows  along  the  hillsides,  thus 
converting  the  scarp  of  the  hills  into  a  succession  of  small  ter 
races  which,  when  once  turfed  over,  are  very  permanent. 
Experience  is  said  to  have  demonstrated  that  this  simple  pro 
cess  suffices  to  retain  the  water  of  rains,  of  snows,  and  of  small 
springs  and  rivulets,  long  enough  for  the  irrigation  of  the  soil, 
thus  increasing  its  product  of  herbage  in  a  fivefold  proportion, 
and  that  it  partially  checks  the  too  rapid  flow  of  surface  water 
into  the  valleys,  and,  consequently,  in  some  measure  obviates 
one  of  the  most  prominent  causes  of  inundations.*  It  is  evi- 

*  TEOY,  fitude  sur  le  Reboisement  cles  Montagnes,  §§  6,  7,  21. 


CAUSES    AND    PREVENTION    OF    INUNDATIONS.  397 

dent  that,  if  such  results  are  produced  by  this  method,  its  intro 
duction  upon  an  extensive  scale  must  also  have  the  same 
climatic  effects  as  other  systems  of  irrigation. 

"Whatever  may  be  the  ultimate  advantages  of  reclothing  a 
large  extent  of  the  territory  of  France  with  wood,  or  of  so 
shaping  its  surface  as  to  prevent  the  too  rapid  flow  of  water 
over  it,  the  results  to  be  obtained  by  such  processes  can  be 
realized  in  an  adequate  measure  only  after  a  long  succession 
of  years.  Other  steps  must  be  taken,  both  for  the  immediate 
security  of  the  lives  and  property  of  the  present  generation, 
and  for  the  prevention  of  yet  greater  and  remoter  evils  which 
are  inevitable  unless  means  to  obviate  them  are  found  before 
it  is  forever  too  late.  The  frequent  recurrence  of  inundations 
like  those  of  1856,  for  a  single  score  of  years,  in  the  basins  of 
the  Rhone  and  the  Loire,  with  only  the  present  securities 
against  them,  would  almost  depopulate  the  valleys  of  those 
rivers,  and  produce  physical  revolutions  in  them,  which,  like 
revolutions  in  the  political  world,  could  never  be  made  to  "  go 
backward." 

Destructive  inundations  are  seldom,  if  ever,  produced  by 
precipitation  within  the  limits  of  the  principal  valley,  but 
almost  uniformly  by  sudden  thaws  or  excessive  rains  on  the 
mountain  ranges  where  the  tributaries  take  their  rise.  It  is 
therefore  plain  that  any  measures  which  shall  check  the  flow 
of  surface  waters  into  the  channels  of  the  affluents,  or  which 
shall  retard  the  delivery  of  such  waters  into  the  principal 
stream  by  its  tributaries,  will  diminish  in  the  same  proportion 
the  dangers  and  the  evils  of  inundation  by  great  rivers.  The 
retention  of  the  surface  waters  upon  or  in  the  soil  can  hardly 
be  accomplished  except  by  the  methods  already  mentioned, 
replanting  of  forests,  and  furrowing  or  terracing.  The  current 
of  mountain  streams  can  be  checked  by  various  methods, 
among  which  the  most  familiar  and  obvious  is  the  erection  of 
barriers  or  dams  across  their  channels,  at  points  convenient  for 
forming  reservoirs  large  enough  to  retain  the  superfluous 
waters  of  great  rains  and  thaws.  Besides  the  utility  of  such 
basins  in  preventing  floods,  the  construction  of  them  is  recom- 


398  BASINS    OF  RECEPTION. 

mended  by  very  strong  considerations,  such  as  the  meteoro 
logical  effects  of  increased  evaporable  surface,  the  furnishing 
of  a  constant  supply  of  water  for  agricultural  and  mechanical 
purposes,  and,  finally,  their  value  as  ponds  for  breeding  and 
rearing  fish,  and,  perhaps,  for  cultivating  aquatic  vegetables. 

The  objections  to  the  general  adoption  of  the  system  of 
reservoirs  are  these :  the  expense  of  their  construction  and 
maintenance  ;  the  reduction  of  cultivable  area  by  the  amount 
of  surface  they  must  cover  ;  the  interruption  they  would  occa 
sion  to  free  communication ;  the  probability  that  they  would 
soon  be  filled  up  with  sediment,  and  the  obvious  fact  that 
when  full  of  earth  or  even  water,  they  would  no  longer  serve 
their  principal  purpose ;  the  great  danger  to  which  they  would 
expose  the  country  below  them  in  case  of  the  bursting  of  their 
barriers  ;  *  the  evil  consequences  they  would  occasion  by  pro 
longing  the  flow  of  inundations  in  proportion  as  they  dimin 
ished  their  height ;  the  injurious  effects  it  is  supposed  they 
would  produce  upon  the  salubrity  of  the  neighboring  districts  ; 
and,  lastly,  the  alleged  impossibility  of  constructing  artificial 
basins  sufficient  in  capacity  to  prevent,  or  in  any  considerable 
measure  to  mitigate,  the  evils  they  are  intended  to  guard 
against. 

The  last  argument  is  more  easily  reduced  to  a  numerical 
question  than  the  others.  The  mean  and  extreme  annual  pre 
cipitation  of  all  the  basins  where  the  construction  of  such 
works  would  be  seriously  proposed  is  already  approximately 
known  by  meteorological  tables,  and  the  quantity  of  water, 
delivered  by  the  greatest  floods  which  have  occurred  within 
the  memory  of  man,  may  be  roughly  estimated  from  their 
visible  traces.  From  these  elements,  or  from  recorded  ob 
servations,  the  capacity  of  the  necessary  reservoirs  can  be  cal 
culated.  Let  us  take  the  case  of  the  Ardeche.  In.  the  inun 
dation  of  1857,  that  river  poured  into  the  Khone  1,305,000,000 
cubic  yards  of  water  in  three  days.  If  we  suppose  that  half 

*  For  accounts  of  damage  from  the  bursting  of  reservoirs,  see  VALLEE, 
Memoire  sur  les  Reservoirs  d1  Alimentation  des  Canaux,  Annales  des  Ponis  et 
Chaussees,  1833,  ler  semestre,  p.  261. 


BASINS   OF   KECEPTION.  399 

this  quantity  might  have  been  suffered  to  flow  down  its  chan 
nel  without  inconvenience,  we  shall  have  about  650,000,000 
cubic  yards  to  provide  for  by  reservoirs.  The  Ardeche  and 
its  principal  affluent,  the  Chassezac,  have,  together,  about 
twelve  considerable  tributaries  rising  near  the  crest  of  the 
mountains  which  bound  the  basin.  If  reservoirs  of  equal 
capacity  were  constructed  upon  all  of  them,  each  reservoir 
must  be  able  to  contain  54,000,000  cubic  yards,  or,  in  other 
words,  must  be  equal  to  a  lake  3,000  yards  long,  1,000  yards 
wide,  and  18  yards  deep,  and  besides,  in  order  to  render  any 
effectual  service,  the  reservoirs  must  all  have  been  empty  at 
the  commencement  of  the  rains  which  produced  the  inun 
dation. 

Thus  far,  I  have  supposed  the  swelling  of  the  waters  to  be 
uniform  throughout  the  whole  basin ;  but  such  was  by  no 
means  the  fact  in  the  inundation  of  1857,  for  the  rise  of  the 
Chassezac,  which  is  as  large  as  the  Ardeche  proper,  did  not 
exceed  the  limits  of  ordinary  floods,  and  the  dangerous  excess 
came  solely  from  the  headwaters  of  the  latter  stream.  Hence 
reservoirs  of  double  the  capacity  I  have  supposed  would  have 
been  necessary  upon  the  tributaries  of  that  river,  to  prevent 
the  injurious  effects  of  the  inundation.  It  is  evident  that  the 
construction  of  reservoirs  of  such  magnitude  for  such  a  purpose 
is  financially,  if  not  physically,  impracticable,  and  when  we 
take  into  account  a  point  I  have  just  suggested,  namely,  that 
the  reservoirs  must  be  empty  at  all  times  of  apprehended  flood, 
and,  of  course,  their  utility  limited  almost  solely  to  the  single 
object  of  preventing  inundations,  the  total  inapplicability  of 
such  a  measure  in  this  particular  case  becomes  still  more  glar 
ingly  manifest. 

Another  not  less  conclusive  fact  is  that  the  valleys  of  all 
the  upland  tributaries  of  the  Ardeche  descend  so  rapidly,  and 
have  so  little  lateral  expansion,  as  to  render  the  construction 
of  capacious  reservoirs  in  them  quite  impracticable.  Indeed, 
engineers  have  found  but  two  points  in  the  whole  basin  suit 
able  for  that  purpose,  and  the  reservoirs  admissible  at  these 
would  have  only  a  joint  capacity  of  about  70,000,000  cubic 


400  BASINS   IN   PERU  AND   SPAIN. 

yards,  or  less  than  one  ninth  part  of  what  I  suppose  tc  be 
required.  The  case  of  the  Ardeche  is  no  doubt  an  extreme 
one,  both  in  the  topographical  character  of  its  basin  and  in  its 
exposure  to  excessive  rains  ;  but  all  destructive  inundations 
are,  in  a  certain  sense,  extreme  cases  also,  and  this  of  the 
Ardeche  serves  to  show  that  the  construction  of  reservoirs  is 
not  by  any  means  to  be  regarded  as  a  universal  panacea 
against  floods. 

Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  this  measure  to  be  summarily 
rejected.  Nature  has  adopted  it  on  a  great  scale,  on  both 
flanks  of  the  Alps,  and  on  a  smaller,  on  those  of  the  Adiron- 
dacks  and  lower  chains,  and  in  this  as  in  many  other  instances, 
her  processes  may  often  be  imitated  with  advantage.  The 
validity  of  the  remaining  objections  to  the  system  under  dis 
cussion  depends  on  the  topography,  geology,  and  special  cli 
mate  of  the  regions  where  it  is  proposed  to  establish  such 
reservoirs.  Many  upland  streams  present  numerous  points 
where  none  of  these  objections,  except  those  of  expense  and  of 
clanger  from  the  breaking  of  dams,  could  have  any  application. 
Reservoirs  may  be  so  constructed  as  to  retain  the  entire  pre 
cipitation  of  the  heaviest  thaws  and  rains,  leaving  only  the 
ordinary  quantity  to  flow  along  the  channel ;  they  may  be 
raised  to  such  a  height  as  only  partially  to  obstruct  the  surface 
drainage  ;  or  they  may  be  provided  with  sluices  by  means  of 
which  their  whole  contents  can  be  discharged  in  the  dry  sea 
son  and  a  summer  crop  be  grown  upon  the  ground  they  cover 
at  high  water.  The  expediency  of  employing  them  and  the 
mode  of  construction  depend  on  local  conditions,  and  no  rules 
of  universal  applicability  can  be  laid  down  on  the  subject. 

It  is  remarkable  that  nations  which  we,  in  the  false  pride 
of  our  modern  civilization,  so  generally  regard  as  little  less 
than  barbarian,  should  have  long  preceded  Christian  Europe  in 
the  systematic  employment  of  great  artificial  basins  for  the 
various  purposes  they  are  calculated  to  subserve.  The  ancient 
Peruvians  built  strong  walls,  of  excellent  workmanship,  across 
the  channels  of  the  mountain  sources  of  important  streams, 
and  the  Arabs  executed  immense  vf  uks  of  similar  description, 


CHANGE   OF   KIVEK   BED.  401 

both  in  the  great  Arabian  peninsula  and  in  all  the  provinces 
of  Spain  which  had  the  good  fortune  to  fall  under  their  sway. 
The  Spaniards  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  who,  in 
many  points  of  true  civilization  and  culture,  were  far  inferior 
to  the  races  they  subdued,  wantonly  destroyed  these  noble 
monuments  of  social  and  political  wisdom,  or  suffered  them  to 
perish,  because  they  were  too  ignorant  to  appreciate  their 
value,  or  too  unskilful  as  practical  engineers  to  be  able  to 
maintain  them,  and  some  of  their  most  important  territories 
were  soon  reduced  to  sterility  and  poverty  in  consequence. 

Another  method  of  preventing  or  diminishing  the  evils  of 
inundation  by  torrents  and  mountain  rivers,  analogous  to  that 
employed  for  the  drainage  of  lakes,  consists  in  the  permanent 
or  occasional  diversion  of  their  surplus  waters,  or  of  their  entire 
currents,  from  their  natural  courses,  by  tunnels  or  open  chan 
nels  cut  through  their  banks.  Nature,  in  many  cases,  resorts 
to  a  similar  process.  Most  great  rivers  divide  themselves  into 
several  arms  in  their  lower  course,  and  enter  the  sea  by  dif 
ferent  mouths.  There  are  also  cases  where  rivers  send  off  lat 
eral  branches  to  convey  a  part  of  their  waters  into  the  channel 
of  other  streams.*  The  most  remarkable  of  these  is  the  junc 
tion  between  the  Amazon  and  the  Orinoco  by  the  natural 
canal  of  the  Cassiquiare  and  the  Rio  Negro.  In  India,  the 
Cambodja  and  the  Men  am  are  connected  by  the  Anam  ;  the 
Saluen  and  the  Irawaddi  by  the  Panlaun.  There  are  similar 
examples,  though  on  a  much  smaller  scale,  in  Europe.  The 
Tornea  and  the  Calix  rivers  in  Lapland  communicate  by  the 
Tarando,  and  in  Westphalia,  the  Else,  an  arm  of  the  Haase, 
falls  into  the  "Weser. 

The  change  of  bed  in  rivers  by  gradual  erosion  of  their 
banks  is  familiar  to  all,  but  instances  of  the  sudden  abandon 
ment  of  a  primitive  channel  are  by  no  means  wanting.  At  a 

*  Some  geographical  writers  apply  the  term  bifurcation  exclusively  to 
this  intercommunication  of  rivers ;  others,  with  more  etymological  pro 
priety,  use  it  to  express  the  division  of  great  rivers  into  branches  at  the 
head  of  their  deltas.  A  technical  term  is  wanting  to  designate  the  phe 
nomenon  mentioned  in  the  text. 
26 


4:02  NILE   CANALS DIVERSION    OF    RIVERS. 

period  of  unknown  antiquity,  the  Ardeche  pierced  a  tunnel 
200  feet  wide  and  100  nigh,  through  a  rock,  and  sent  its  whole 
current  through  it,  deserting  its  former  bed,  which  gradually 
filled  up,  though  its  course  remained  traceable.  In  the  great 
inundation  of  1827,  the  tunnel  proved  insufficient  for  the  dis 
charge  of  the  water,  and  the  river  burst  through  the  obstruc 
tions  which  had  now  choked  up  its  ancient  channel,  and  re 
sumed  its  original  course.* 

It  was  probably  such  facts  as  these  that  suggested  to 
ancient  engineers  the  possibility  of  like  artificial  operations, 
and  there  are  numerous  instances  of  the  execution  of  works  for 
this  purpose  in  very  remote  ages.  The  Bahr  Jusef,  the  great 
stream  which  supplies  the  Fayoum  with  w^ater  from  the  Nile, 
has  been  supposed,  by  some  writers,  to  be  a  natural  channel ; 
but  both  it  and  the  Bahr  el  Wady  are  almost  certainly  arti 
ficial  canals  constructed  to  water  that  basin,  to  regulate  the 
level  of  Lake  Moeris,  and  possibly,  also,  to  diminish  the  dan 
gers  resulting  from  excessive  inundations  of  the  Nile,  by  serv 
ing  as  waste-weirs  to  discharge  a  part  of  its  surplus  waters. 
Several  of  the  seven  ancient  mouths  of  the  Nile  are  believed 
to  be  artificial  channels,  and  Herodotus  even  asserts  that  King 
Menes  diverted  the  entire  course  of  that  river  from  the  Libyan 
to  the  Arabian  side  of  the  valley.  There  are  traces  of  an 
Ancient  river  bed  along  the  western  mountains,  which  give 
some  countenance  to  this  statement.  But  it  is  much  more 
probable  that  the  works  of  Menes  were  designed  rather  to 
prevent  a  natural,  than  to  produce  an  artificial,  change  in  the 
channel  of  the  river. 

Two  of  the  most  celebrated  cascades  in  Europe,  those  of 
the  Teverone  at  Tivoli  and  of  the  Yelino  at  Terni,  owe,  if  not 
their  existence,  at  least  their  position  and  character,  to  the 
diversion  of  their  waters  from  their  natural  beds  into  new 
channels,  in  order  to  obviate  the  evils  produced  by  their  fre 
quent  floods.  Eemarkable  works  of  the  same  sort  have  been 
executed  in  Switzerland,  in  very  recent  times.  Until  the  year 

*  MAEDIQNT,  Memoirs  sur  les  Inondations  de  V Ardeche,  p.  13. 


GLACIER   LAKES.  403 

1714,  the  Kander,  which  drains  several  large  Alpine  valleys, 
ran,  for  a  considerable  distance,  parallel  with  the  Lake  of 
Thun,  and  a  few  miles  below  the  city  of  that  name  emptied 
into  the  river  Aar.  It  frequently  flooded  the  flats  along  the 
lower  part  of  its  course,  and  it  was  determined  to  divert  it  into 
the  Lake  of  Tlmn.  For  this  purpose,  two  parallel  tunnels 
were  cut  through  the  intervening  rock,  and  the  river  turned 
into  them.  The  violence  of  the  current  burst  up  the  roof  of 
the  tunnels,  and,  in  a  very  short  time,  wore  the  new  channel 
down  not  less  than  one  hundred  feet,  and  even  deepened  the 
former  bed  at  least  fifty  feet,  for  a  distance  of  two  or  three 
miles  above  the  tunnel.  The  lake  was  two  hundred  feet  deep 
at  the  point  where  the  river  was  conducted  into  it,  but  the 
gravel  and  sand  carried  down  by  the  Kander  has  formed  at  its 
mouth  a  delta  containing  more  than  a  hundred  acres,  which  is 
still  advancing  at  the  rate  of  several  yards  a  year.  The  Linth, 
which  formerly  sent  its  waters  directly  to  the  Lake  of  Zurich, 
and  often  produced  very  destructive  inundations,  was  turned 
into  the  "Wallensee  about  forty  years  ago,  and  in  both  these 
cases  a  great  quantity  of  valuable  land  was  rescued  both  from 
flood  and  from  insalubrity. 

In  Switzerland,  the  most  terrible  inundations  often  result 
from  the  damming  up  of  deep  valleys  by  ice  slips  or  by  the 
gradual  advance  of  glaciers,  and  the  accumulation  of  great 
masses  of  water  above  the  obstructions.  The  ice  is  finally  dis 
solved  by  the  heat  of  summer  or  the  flow  of  warm  waters,  and 
when  it  bursts,  the  lake  formed  above  is  discharged  almost  in 
an  instant,  and  all  below  is  swept  down  to  certain  destruction. 
In  1595,  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  lives  and  a  great  amount 
of  property  were  lost  by  the  eruption  of  a  lake  formed  by  the 
descent  of  a  glacier  into  the  valley  of  the  Drance,  and  a  sim 
ilar  calamity  laid  waste  a  considerable  extent  of  soil  in  the 
year  1818.  On  this  latter  occasion,  the  barrier  of  ice  and 
snow  was  3,000  feet  long,  600  thick,  and  400  high,  and  the 
lake  which  had  formed  above  it  contained  not  less  than 
800,000,000  cubic  feet.  A  tunnel  was  driven  through  the  ice, 
and  about  300,000,000  cubic  feet  of  water  safely  drawn  off  by 


4:04:  RIVER   EMBANKMENTS. 

it,  but  the  thawing  of  the  walls  of  the  tunnel  rapidly  enlarged 
it,  and  before  the  lake  was  half  drained,  the  barrier  gave  way 
and  the  remaining  500,000,000  cubic  feet  of  water  were  dis 
charged  in  half  an  hour.  The  recurrence  of  these  floods  has 
since  been  prevented  by  directing  streams  of  water,  warmed 
by  the  sun,  upon  the  ice  in  the  bed  of  the  valley,  and  thus 
thawing  it  before  it  accumulates  in  sufficient  mass  to  threaten 
serious  danger. 

In  the  cases  of  diversion  of  streams  above  mentioned,  im 
portant  geographical  changes  have  been  directly  produced  by 
those  operations.  By  the  rarer  process  of  draining  glacier 
lakes,  natural  eruptions  of  water,  which  would  have  occasioned 
not  less  important  changes  in  the  face  of  the  earth,  have  been 
prevented  by  human  agency. 

The  principal  means  hitherto  relied  upon  for  defence 
against  river  inundations  has  been  the  construction  of  dikes 
along  the  banks  of  the  streams,  parallel  to  the  channel  and 
generally  separated  from  each  other  by  a  distance  not  much 
greater  than  the  natural  width  of  the  bed.*  If  such  walls  are 
high  enough  to  confine  the  water  and  strong  enough  to  resist 
its  pressure,  they  secure  the  lands  behind  them  from  all  the 
evils  of  inundation  except  those  resulting  from  infiltration ; 
but  such  ramparts  are  enormously  costly  in  original  construc 
tion  and  maintenance,  and,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  filling 
up  of  the  bed  of  the  river  in  its  lower  course,  by  sand  and 
gravel,  involves  the  necessity  of  occasionally  incurring  new 
expenditures  in  increasing  the  height  of  the  banks. f  They 

*  In  the  case  of  rivers  flowing  through  wide  alluvial  plains  and  much 
inclined  to  shift  their  beds,  like  the  Po,  the  embankments  often  leave  a 
very  wide  space  between  them.  The  dikes  of  the  Po  are  sometimes  three 
or  four  miles  apart. — BAUMGARTEN,  after  LOMBARDIXI,  Annales  des  Fonts  et 
Chaussees,  1847,  ler  semestre,  p.  149. 

t  It  appears  from  the  investigations  of  Lombardini  that  the  rate  of  ele 
vation  of  the  bed  of  the  Po  has  been  much  exaggerated  by  earlier  writers, 
and  in  some  parts  of  its  course  the  change  is  so  slow  that  its  level  may  be 
regarded  as  nearly  constant. — BATJMGARTEN,  volume  before  cited,  pp.  175, 
ct  seqq.  See  Appendix,  No.  47. 

If  the  western  coast  of  the  Adriatic  is  undergoing  a  secular  depression, 


KIVEK   EMBANKMENTS.  405 

are  attended,  too,  with  some  collateral  disadvantages.  They 
deprive  the  earth  of  the  fertilizing  deposits  of  the  waters, 
which  are  powerful  natural  restoratives  of  soils  exhausted  by 
cultivation ;  they  accelerate  the  rapidity  and  transporting 
power  of  the  current  at  high  water  by  confining  it  to  a  nar 
rower  channel,  and  it  consequently  conveys  to  the  sea  the 
earthy  matter  it  holds  in  suspension,  and  chokes  up  harbors 
writh  a  deposit  which  it  would  otherwise  have  spread  over  a 
wide  surface;  they  interfere  with  roads  and  the  convenience 
of  river  navigation,  and  no  amount  of  cost  or  care  can  secure 
them  from  occasional  rupture,  in  case  of  which  the  rush  of  the 
waters  through  the  breach  is  more  destructive  than  the  natural 
flow  of  the  highest  inundation.* 

as  many  circumstances  concur  to  prove,  the  sinking  of  the  plain  near  the 
coast  may  both  tend  to  prevent  the  deposit  of  sediment  in  the  river  hed  by 
increasing  the  velocity  of  its  current,  and  compensate  the  elevation  really 
produced  by  deposits,  so  that  no  sensible  elevation  would  result,  though 
much  gravel  and  slime  might  be  let  fall. 

*  To  secure  the  city  of  Sacramento  in  California  from  the  inundations 
to  which  it  is  subject,  a  dike  or  levee  was  built  upon  the  bank  of  the  river 
and  raised  to  an  elevation  above  that  of  the  highest  known  floods,  and  it 
was  connected,  below  the  town,  with  grounds  lying  considerably  above  the 
river.  On  one  occasion  a  breach  in  the  dike  occurred  above  the  town  at 
a  very  high  stage  of  the  flood.  The  water  poured  in  behind  it,  and  over-  \ 
flowed  the  lower  part  of  the  city,  which  remained  submerged  for  some 
time  after  the  river  had  retired  to  its  ordinary  level,  because  the  dike, 
which  had  been  built  to  keep  the  water  out,  now  kept  it  in. 

According  to  Arthur  Young,  on  the  lower  Po,  where  the  surface  of  tho 
river  has  been  elevated  much  above  the  level  of  the  adjacent  fields  by 
diking,  the  peasants  in  his  time  frequently  endeavored  to  secure  their 
grounds  against  threatened  devastation  through  the  bursting  of  the  dikes,  \ 
by  crossing  the  river  when  the  danger  became  imminent  and  opening  a 
cut  in  the  opposite  bank,  thus  saving  their  own  property  by  flooding  their 
neighbors'.  He  adds,  that  at  high  water  the  navigation  of  the  river  was 
absolutely  interdicted,  except  to  mail  and  passenger  boats,  and  that  the 
guards  fired  upon  all  others ;  the  object  of  the  prohibition  being  to  prevent 
the  peasants  from  resorting  to  this  measure  of  self-defence. —  Travels  in 
Italy  and  Spain,  Xov.  7,  1789. 

la  a  flood  of  the  Po  in  1839,  a  breach  of  the  embankment  took  place  at 
Bonizzo.     The  water  poured  through  and  inundated  116,000  acres,  or  181 


406  TKANSVEKSE   EMBANKMENTS. 

For  these  reasons,  many  experienced  engineers  are  of 
opinion  that  the  system  of  longitudinal  dikes  ought  to  be 
abandoned,  or,  where  that  cannot  be  done  without  involving 
too  great  a  sacrifice  of  existing  constructions,  their  elevation 
should  be  much  reduced,  so  as  to  present  no  obstruction  to  the 
lateral  spread  of  extraordinary  floods,  and  they  should  be  pro 
vided  with  sluices  to  admit  the  water  without  violence  when 
ever  they  are  likely  to  be  overflowed.  "Where  dikes  have  not 
been  erected,  and  where  they  have  been  reduced  in  height,  it 
is  proposed  to  construct,  at  convenient  intervals,  transverse 
embankments  of  moderate  height  running  from  the  banks  of 
the  river  across  the  plains  to  the  hills  which  bound  them. 
These  measures,  it  is  argued,  will  diminish  the  violence  of 
inundations  by  permitting  the  waters  to  extend  themselves 
over  a  greater  surface  and  thus  retarding  the  flow  of  the  river 
currents,  and  will,  at  the  same  time,  secure  the  deposit  of  fer 
tilizing  slime  upon  all  the  soil  covered  by  the  flood. 

Rozet,  an  eminent  French  engineer,  has  proposed  a  method 
of  diminishing  the  ravages  of  inundations,  which  aims  to  com 
bine  the  advantages  of  all  other  systems,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  obviate  the  objections  to  which  they  are  all  more  or  less 
liable.*  The  plan  of  Eozet  is  recommended  by  its  simplicity 
and  cheapness  as  well  as  its  facility  and  rapidity  of  execution, 
and  is  looked  upon  with  favor  by  many  persons  very  compe 
tent  to  judge  in  such  matters.  He  proposes  to  commence  with 
the  amphitheatres  in  which  mountain  torrents  so  often  rise,  by 
covering  their  slopes  and  tilling  their  beds  with  loose  blocks 
of  rock,  and  by  constructing  at  their  outlets,  and  at  other  nar 
row  points  in  the  channels  of  the  torrents,  permeable  barriers 
of  the  same  material  promiscuously  heaped  up,  much  accord 
ing  to  the  method  employed  by  the  ancient  Romans  in  their 
northern  provinces  for  a  similar  purpose.  By  this  means,  he 

square  miles,  of  the  plain,  to  the  depth  of  from  .twenty  to  twenty-three  feet 
in  its  lower  parts. — BAUMGAKTEN,  after  LOMBAEDINI,  volume  before  cited, 
p.  152. 

*  MOTENS  de  forcer  les  Torrents  de  rendre  une  partie  du  sol  quails  rava< 
gent,  et  d^empecher  les  grandes  Inonflations. 


4:07 

supposes,  the  rapidity  of  the  current  would  be  checked,  and  the 
quantity  of  transported  pebbles  and  gravel  much  diminished. 

When  the  stream  has  reached  that  part  of  its  course  where 
it  is  bordered  by  soil  capable  of  cultivation,  and  worth  the 
expense  of  protection,  he  proposes  to  place  along  one  or  both 
sides  of  the  stream,  according  to  circumstances,  a  line  of  cubical 
blocks  of  stone  or  pillars  of  masonry  three  or  four  feet  high 
and  wide,  and  at  the  distance  of  about  eleven  yards  from  each 
other.  The  space  between  the  two  lines,  or  between  a  line  and 
the  opposite  high  bank,  would,  of  course,  be  determined  by 
observation  of  the  width  of  the  swift-water  current  at  high 
floods.  As  an  auxiliary  measure,  small  ditches  and  banks,  or 
low  walls  of  pebbles,  should  be  constructed  from  the  line  of 
blocks  across  the  grounds  to  be  protected,  nearly  at  right 
angles  to  the  current,  but  slightly  inclining  downward,  and  at 
convenient  distances  from  each  other.  Rozet  thinks  the  proper 
interval  would  be  300  yards,  and  it  is  evident  that,  if  he  is 
right  in  his  main  principle,  hedges,  rows  of  trees,  or  even 
common  fences,  would  in  many  cases  answer  as  good  a  pur 
pose  as  banks  and  trenches  or  low  walls.  The  blocks  or  pillars 
of  stone  would,  he  contends,  check  the  lateral  currents  so  as  to 
compel  them  to  let  fall  all  their  pebbles  and  gravel  in  the  main 
channel — where  they  would  be  rolled  along  until  ground  down 
to  sand  or  silt — and  the  transverse  obstructions  would  detain 
the  water  upon  the  soil  long  enough  to  secure  the  deposit  of 
its  fertilizing  slime.  Numerous  facts  are  cited  in  support  of 
the  author's  views,  and  I  imagine  there  are  few  residents  of 
rural  districts  whose  own  observation  will  not  furnish  testi 
mony  confirmatory  of  their  soundness.* 

*  The  effect  of  trees  and  other  detached  obstructions  in  checking  the 
flow  of  water  is  particularly  noticed  by  Palissy  in  his  essay  on  Waters  and 
Fountains,  p.  173,  edition  of  1844.  "  There  be,"  says  he,  "in  divers  parts 
of  France,  and  specially  at  Xantes,  wooden  bridges,  where,  to  break  the 
force  of  the  waters  and  of  the  floating  ice,  which  might  endamage  the  piers 
of  the  said  bridges,  they  have  driven  upright  timbers  into  the  bed  of  the 
rivers  above  the  said  piers,  without  the  which  they  should  abide  but  little. 
And  in  like  wise,  the  trees  which  be  planted  along  the  mountains  do  much 
deaden  the  violence  of  the  waters  that  flow  from  them." 


408  RIVER    DEPOSITS. 

The  deposit  of  slime  by  rivers  upon  the  flats  along  their 
banks  not  only  contributes  greatly  to  the  fertility  of  the  soil 
thus  flowed,  but  it  subserves  a  still  moro*  important  purpose  in 
the  general  economy  of  nature.  All  running  streams  begin 
with  excavating  channels  for  themselves,  or  deepening  the 
natural  depressions  in  which  they  flow  ;  *  but  in  proportion  as 
their  outlets  are  raised  by  the  solid  material  transported  by 
their  currents,  their  velocity  is  diminished,  they  deposit  gravel 
and  sand  at  constantly  higher  and  higher  points,  and  so  at  last 
elevate,  in  the  middle  and  lower  part  of  their  course,  the  beds 
they  had  previously  scooped  out.f  The  raising  of  the  chan- 

*  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  all  rivers  excavate  their  own  valleys,  for  I 
have  no  doubt  that  in  the  majority  of  cases  such  depressions  of  the  surface 
originate  in  higher  geological  causes,  and  hence  the  valley  :nakes  the  river, 
not  the  river  the  valley.  But  even  if  we  suppose  a  hasin  of  the  hardest  rock 
to  be  elevated  at  once,  completely  formed,  from  the  submarine  abyss  where 
it  was  fashioned,  the  first  shower  of  rain  that  falls  upon  it  after  it  rises  to 
the  air,  while  its  waters  will  follow  the  lowest  lines  of  the  surface,  will 
cut  those  lines  deeper,  and  so  on  with  every  successive  rain.  The  disin 
tegrated  rock  from  the  upper  part  of  the  basin  forms  the  lower  by  alluvial 
deposit,  which  is  constantly  transported  farther  and  farther  until  the  re 
sistance  of  gravitation  and  cohesion  balances  the  mechanical  force  of  the 
running  water.  Thus  plains,  more  or  less  steeply  inclined,  are  formed,  in 
which  the  river  is  constantly  changing  its  bed,  according  to  the  perpetually 
varying  force  and  direction  of  its  currents,  modified  as  they  are  by  ever- 
fluctuating  conditions.  Thus  the  Po  is  said  to  have  long  inclined  to  move 
its  channel  southward  in  consequence  of  the  superior  mechanical  force  of 
its  northern  affluents.  A  diversion  of  these  tributaries  from  their  present 
beds,  so  that  they  should  enter  the  main  stream  at  other  points  and  in  dif 
ferent  directions,  might  modify  the  whole  course  of  that  great  river.  But 
the  mechanical  force  of  the  tributary  is  not  the  only  element  of  its  influ 
ence  on  the  course  of  the  principal  stream.  The  deposits  it  lodges  in  the 
bed  of  the  latter,  acting  as  simple  obstructions  or  causes  of  diversion,  are 
not  less  important  agents  of  change. 

t  The  distance  to  which  a  new  obstruction  to  the  flow  of  a  river, 
whether  by  a  dam  or  by  a  deposit  in  its  channel,  will  retard  its  current, 
or,  in  popular  phrase,  "  set  back  the  water,"  is  a  problem  of  more  diffi 
cult  practical  solution  than  almost  any  other  in  hydraulics.  The  elements 
— such  as  straightness  or  crookedness  of  channel,  character  of  bottom  and 
banks,  volume  and  previous  velocity  of  current,  mass  of  water  far  above 
the  obstruction,  extraordinary  drought  or  humidity  of  seasons,  relative 


EFFECTS    OF   EMBANKMENTS.  409 

nels  is  compensated  in  part  by  the  simultaneous  elevation  of 
their  banks  and  the  flats  adjoining  them,  from  the  deposit  of 
the  finer  particles  of  earth  and  vegetable  mould  brought  down 
from  the  mountains,  without  which  elevation  the  low  grounds 
bordering  all  rivers  would  be,  as  in  many  cases  they  in  fact 
are,  mere  morasses. 

All  arrangements  which  tend  to  obstruct  this  process  of 
raising  the  flats  adjacent  to  the  channel,  whether  consisting  in 
dikes  which  confine  the  waters,  and,  at  the  same  time,  aug 
ment  the  velocity  of  the  current,  or  in  other  means  of  pro 
ducing  the  last-mentioned  effect,  interfere  with  the  restorative 
economy  of  nature,  and  at  last  occasion  the  formation  of 
marshes  where,  if  left  to  herself,  she  would  have  accumulated 

extent  to  which  the  river  may  be  affected  by  the  precipitation  in  its  own 
basin,  and  by  supplies  received  through  subterranean  channels  from  sources 
so  distant  as  to  be  exposed  to  very  different  meteorological  influences,  effects 
of  clearing  and  other  improvements  always  going  on  in  new  countries — are 
all  extremely  difficult,  and  some  of  them  impossible,  to  be  known  and 
measured.  In  the  American  States,  very  numerous  watermills  have  been 
erected  within  a  few  years,  and  there  is  scarcely  a  stream  in  the  settled 
portion  of  the  country  which  has  not  several  milldams  upon  it.  When  a 
dam  is  raised — a  process  which  the  gradual  diminution  of  the  summer  cur- 
'  rents  renders  frequently  necessary — or  when  a  new  dam  is  built,  it  often 
happens  that  the  meadows  above  are  flowed,  or  that  the  retardation  of  the 
stream  extends  back  to  the  dam  next  above.  This  leads  to  frequent  law 
suits.  From  the  great  uncertainty  of  the  facts,  the  testimony  is  more  con 
flicting  in  these  than  in  any  other  class  of  cases,  and  the  obstinacy  with 
which  "water  causes"  are  disputed  has  become  proverbial. 

The  subterranean  courses  of  the  waters  form  a  subject  very  difficult  of 
investigation,  and  it  is  only  recently  that  its  vast  importance  has  been 
recognized.  The  interesting  observations  of  Schmidt  on  the  caves  of  the 
Karst  and  their  rivers  throw  much  light  on  the  underground  hydrography 
of  limestone  districts,  and  serve  to  explain  how,  in  the  low  peninsula  of 
Florida,  rivers,  which  must  have  their  sources  in  mountains  a  hundred  or 
more  miles  distant,  can  pour  out  of  the  earth  in  currents  large  enough  to 
admit  of  steamboat  navigation  to  their  very  basins  of  eruption.  Artesian 
wells  are  revealing  to  us  the  existence  of  subterranean  lakes  and  rivers 
sometimes  superposed  one  above  another  in  successive  sheets  ;  but  the  still 
more  important  subject  of  the  absorption  of  water  by  earth  and  its  trans 
mission  by  infiltration  is  yet  wrapped  in  great  obscurity. 


410  LATERAL   EMBANKMENTS. 

inexhaustible  stores  of  the  richest  soil,  and  spread  them  out  ia 
plains  above  the  reach  of  ordinary  floods.* 

Consequences  if  the  Nile  had  been  Diked. 

If  a  system  of  continuous  lateral  dikes,  like  those  of  the  Po, 
had  been  adopted  in  Egypt  in  the  early  dynasties,  when  the 
power  and  the  will  to  undertake  the  most  stupendous  material 
enterprises  were  so  eminently  characteristic  of  the  government 
of  that  country,  and  the  waters  of  the  annual  inundation  con 
sequently  prevented  from  flooding  the  land,  it  is  conceivable 
that  the  productiveness  of  the  small  area  of  cultivable  soil  in 
the  Nile  valley  might  have  been  long  kept  up  by  artificial  irri 
gation  and  the  application  of  manures.  But  nature  would 
have  rebelled  at  last,  and  centuries  before  our  time  the  mighty 
river  would  have  burst  the  fetters  by  which  impotent  man  had 
vainly  striven  to  bind  his  swelling  floods,  the  fertile  fields  of 
Egypt  would  have  been  converted  into  dank  morasses,  and 
then,  perhaps,  in  some  distant  future,  when  the  expulsion  of 
man  should  have  allowed  the  gradual  restoration  of  the  prim 
itive  equilibrium,  would  be  again  transformed  into  luxuriant 
garden  and  plough  land.  Fortunately,  the  "  wisdom  of  Egypt " 
taught  her  children  better  things.  They  invited  and  welcomed, 
not  repulsed,  the  slimy  embraces  of  Nilus,  and  his  favors  have 
been,  from  the  hoariest  antiquity,  the  greatest  material  bless 
ing  ever  bestowed  upon  a  people,  f 

*  The  sediment  of  the  Po  has  filled  up  some  lagoons  and  swamps  in  its 
delta,  and  converted  them  into  comparatively  dry  land ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  retardation  of  the  current  from  the  lengthening  of  its  course,  and 
the  diminution  of  its  velocity  by  the  deposits  at  its  mouth,  have  forced  its 
waters  at  some  higher  points  to  spread  in  spite  of  embankments,  and  thus 
fertile  fields  have  been  turned  into  unhealthy  and  unproductive  marshes. — • 
See  BOTTEE,  Sulla  condizione  del  Terreni  Maremmani  nel  Ferrarese.  An- 
nali  di  Agricoltura,  etc.,  Fasc.  v,  1863. 

t  Deep  borings  have  not  detected  any  essential  difference  in  the  quan 
tity  or  quality  of  the  deposits  of  the  Nile  for  forty  or  fifty,  or,  as  some 
compute,  for  a  hundred  centuries.  From  what  vast  store  of  rich  earth 
does  this  river  derive  the  three  or  four  inches  of  fertilizing  material  which 


EMBANKMENTS   OF   THE   PO.  4:11 

The  valley  of  the  Po  lias  probably  not  been  cultivated  or 
inhabited  so  long  as  that  of  the  Nile,  but  embankments  have 
been  employed  on  its  lower  course  for  at  least  two  thousand 
years,  and  for  many  centuries  they  have  been  connected  in  a 
continuous  chain.  I  have  pointed  out  in  a  former  chapter  the 
effects  produced  on  the  geography  of  the  Adriatic  by  the  de 
posit  of  river  sediment  in  the  sea  at  the  mouths  of  the  Po,  the 
Adige,  and  the  Brenta.  If  these  rivers  had  been  left  uncon- 
fined,  like  the  Mle,  and  allowed  to  spread  their  muddy  waters 
at  will,  according  to  the  laws  of  nature,  the  slime  they  have 
carried  to  the  coast  would  have  been  chiefly  distributed  over  the 
plains  of  Lombardy.  Their  banks  would  have  risen  as  fast  as 
their  beds,  the  coast  line  would  not  have  been  extended  so  far 
into  the  Adriatic,  and,  the  current  of  the  streams  being  conse 
quently  shorter,  the  inclination  of  their  channel  and  the 
rapidity  of  their  flow  would  not  have  been  so  greatly  dimin 
ished.  Had  man  spared  a  reasonable  proportion  of  the  forests 
of  the  Alps,  and  not  attempted  to  control  the  natural  drainage 
of  the  surface,  the  Po  woul^l  resemble  the  Nile  in  all  its  essen 
tial  characteristics,  and,  in  spite  of  the  difference  of  climate, 
perhaps  be  regarded  as  the  friend  and  ally,  not  the  enemy  and 
the  invader,  of  the  population  which  dwells  upon  its  banks.* 


it  spreads  over  tlie  soil  of  Egypt  every  hundred  years  ?  Not  from  the 
White  Nile,  for  that  river  drops  nearly  all  its  suspended  matter  in  the 
broad  expansions  and  slow  current  of  its  channel  south  of  the  tenth  degree 
of  north  latitude.  Nor  does  it  appear  that  much  sediment  is  contributed 
by  the  Bahr-el-Azrek,  which  flows  through  forests  for  a  great  part  of  its 
course.  I  have  been  informed  by  an  old  European  resident  of  Egypt  who 
is  very  familiar  with  the  Upper  Nile,  that  almost  the  whole  of  the  earth 
with  which  its  waters  are  charged  is  brought  down  by  the  Takazze*. 

*  It  is  very  probably  true  that,  as  Lombardini  supposes,  the  plain  of 
Lombardy  was  anciently  covered  with  forests  and  morasses  (Baumgarten, 
1.  c.  p.  156)  ;  but,  had  the  Po  remained  unconfined,  its  deposits  would  have 
raised  its  banks  as  fast  as  its  bed,  and  there  is  no  obvious  reason  why  this 
plain  should  be  more  marshy  than  other  alluvial  flats  traversed  by  great 
rivers.  Its  lo\ver  course  would  possibly  have  become  more  marshy  than 
at  present,  but  the  banks  of  its  middle  and  upper  course  would  have  been 
in  a  better  condition  for  agricultural  use  than  they  now  are. 


412  DEPOSITS   OF  THE   NILE. 

The  Nile  is  larger  than  all  the  rivers  of  Lombardy  to 
gether,*  it  drains  a  basin  twenty  times  as  extensive,  its  banks 
have  been  occupied  by  man  probably  twice  as  long.  But  its 
geographical  character  has  not  been  much  changed  in  the 
whole  period  of  recorded  history,  and,  though  its  outlets  have 
somewhat  fluctuated  in  number  and  position,  its  historically 
known  encroachments  upon  the  sea  are  trifling  compared  with 
those  of  the  Po  and  the  neighboring  streams.  The  deposits  of 
the  Nile  are  naturally  greater  in  Upper  than  in  Lower  Egypt. 
They  are  found  to  have  raised  the  soil  at  Thebes  about  seven 
feet  within  the  last  seventeen  hundred  years,  and  in  the  Delta 
the  rise  has  been  certainly  more  than  half  as  great. 

"We  shall,  therefore,  not  exceed  the  truth  if  we  suppose  the 
annually  inundated  surface  of  Egypt  to  have  been  elevated, 
upon  an  average,  ten  feet,  within  the  last  5,000  years,  or  twice 
and  a  half  the  period  during  which  the  history  of  the  Po  is 
known  to  us.f 

We  may  estimate  the  present  actually  cultivated  area  of 
Egypt  at  about  5,500  square  statute  miles.  As  I  have  com 
puted  in  a  note  on  page  372,  that  area  is  not  more  than  half 
as  extensive  as  under  the  dynasties  of  the  Pharaohs  and  the 
Ptolemies ;  for — though,  in  consequence  of  the  elevation  of 
the  river  bed,  the  inundations  now  have  a  wider  natural 
spread — the  industry  of  the  ancient  Egyptians  conducted  the 

*  From  daily  measurements  during  a  period  of  fourteen  years — 1827  to 
1840— the  mean  delivery  of  the  Po  at  Ponte  Lagoscuro,  below  the  entrance 
of  its  last  tributary,  is  found  to  be  1,720  cubic  metres,  or  60,745  cubic  feet, 
per  second.  Its  smallest  delivery  is  186  cubic  metres,  or  6,569  cubic  feet, 
its  greatest  5,156  cubic  metres,  or  182,094  cubic  feet. — BAUMGAETEN,  follow 
ing  LOMBAKDINI,  volume  before  cited,  p.  159. 

The  average  delivery  of  the  Nile  being  101,000  cubic  feet  per  second,  it 
follows  that  the  Po  contributes  to  the  Adriatic  six  tenths  as  much  water  as 
the  Nile  to  the  Mediterranean — a  result  which  will  surprise  most  readers. 

t  We  are  quite  safe  in  supposing  that  the  valley  of  the  Nile  has  been 
occupied  by  man  at  least  5,000  years.  The  dates  of  Egyptian  chronology 
are  uncertain,  but  I  believe  no  inquirer  estimates  the  age  of  the  great  pyra 
mids  at  less  than  forty  centuries,  and  the  construction  of  such  works  im 
plies  an  already  ancient  civilization. 


EFFECTS   OF    EMBANKING   THE   NILE.  413 

Nile  water  over  a  great  extent  of  soil  it  does  not  now  reach. 
We  may,  then,  adopt  a  mean  between  the  two  quantities,  and 
we  shall  probably  come  near  the  truth  if  we  assume  the  con 
venient  number  of  7,920  square  statute  miles  as  the  average 
measure  of  the  inundated  land  during  the  historical  period. 
Taking  the  deposit  on  this  surface  at  ten  feet,  the  river  sedi 
ment  let  fall  on  the  soil  of  Egypt  within  the  last  fifty  centuries 
would  amount  to  fifteen  cubic  miles. 

Had  the  Nile  been  banked  in,  like  the  Po,  all  this  deposit, 
except  that  contained  in  the  water  diverted  by  canals  or  other 
wise  drawn  from  the  river  for  irrigation  and  other  purposes, 
would  have  been  carried  out  to  sea.*  This  would  have  been 
a  considerable  quantity ;  for  the  Nile  holds  earth  in  suspen 
sion  even  at  low  water,  a  much  larger  proportion  during  the 
flood,  and  irrigation  must  have  been  carried  on  during  the 
whole  year.  The  precise  amount  which  would  have  been  thus 
distributed  over  the  soil  is  matter  of  conjecture,  but  three 
cubic  miles  is  certainly  a  liberal  estimate.  This  would  leave 
twelve  cubic  miles  as  the  quantity  which  embankments  would 
have  compelled  the  Nile  to  transport  to  the  Mediterranean  over 
and  above  what  it  has  actually  deposited  in  that  sea.  The 
Mediterranean  is  shoal  for  some  miles  out  to  sea  along  the 
whole  coast  of  the  Delta,  and  the  large  bays  or  lagoons  within 
the  coast  line,  which  communicate  both  with  the  river  and  the 
sea,  have  little  depth  of  water.  These  lagoons  the  river  deposits 
would  have  filled  up,  and  there  would  still  have  been  surplus 
earth  enough  to  extend  the  Delta  far  into  the  Mediterranean.f 

*  There  are  many  dikes  in  Egypt,  but  they  are  employed  in  but  a  very 
few  cases  to  exclude  the  waters  of  the  inundation.  Their  office  is  to  retain 
the  water  received  at  high  Nile  into  the  inclosures  formed  by  them  until  it 
shall  have  deposited  its  sediment  or  been  drawn  out  for  irrigation ;  and 
they  serve  also  as  causeways  for  interior  communication  during  the  floods. 
The  Egyptian  dikes,  therefore,  instead  of  forcing  the  river,  like  those  of 
the  Po,  to  transport  its  sediment  to  the  sea,  help  to  retain  the  slime,  which, 
if  the  flow  of  the  current  over  the  land  were  not  obstructed,  might  be  car 
ried  back  into  the  channel,  and  at  last  to  the  Mediterranean. 

t  The  Mediterranean  front  of  the  Delta  may  be  estimated  at  one  hun 
dred  and  fiftv  miles  in  length.  Two  cubic  miles  of  earth  would  more  than 


4:14  DEPOSITS   OF   THE   TUSCAN   RIVEKS. 

Deposits  of  the  Tuscan  Rivers. 

The  Amo,  and  all  the  rivers  rising  on  the  western  slopea 
and  spurs  of  the  Apennines,  carry  down  immense  quantities 
of  mud  to  the  Mediterranean.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
volume  of  earth  so  transported  is  very  much  greater  than  it 
would  have  been  had  the  soil  about  the  headwaters  of  those 
rivers  continued  to  be  protected  from,  wash  by  forests;  and 
there  is  as  little  question  that  the  quantity  borne  out  to  sea 
by  the  rivers  of  Western  Italy  is  much  increased  by  artifi 
cial  embankments,  because  they  are  thereby  prevented  from 
spreading  over  the  surface  the  sedimentary  matter  with  which 
they  are  charged.  The  western  coast  of  Tuscany  has  advanced 
some  miles  seaward  within  a  very  few  centuries.  The  bed  of 
the  sea,  for  a  long  distance,  has  been  raised,  and  of  course  the 
relative  elevation  of  the  land  above  it  lessened  ;  harbors  have 
been  filled  up  and  destroyed ;  long  lines  of  coast  dunes  have 
been  formed,  and  the  diminished  inclination  of  the  beds  of  the 
rivers  near  their  outlets  has  caused  their  waters  to  overflow 
their  banks  and  convert  them  into  pestilential  marshes.  The 
territorial  extent  of  "Western  Italy  has  thus  been  considerably 
increased,  but  the  amount  of  soil  habitable  and  cultivable  by 
man  has  been,  in  a  still  higher  proportion,  diminished.  The 
coast  of  ancient  Etruria  was  filled  with  great  commercial 
towns,  and  their  rural  environs  were  occupied  by  a  large  and 
prosperous  population.  But  maritime  Tuscany  has  long  beeif 
one  of  the  most  unhealthy  districts  in  Christendom ;  the 
famous  mart  of  Populonia  has  not  an  inhabitant ;  the  coast  is 

fill  up  the  lagoons  on  the  coast,  and  the  remaining  ten,  even  allowing  the 
mean  depth  of  the  water  to  be  twenty  fathoms,  which  is  beyond  the  truth, 
would  have  been  sufficient  to  extend  the  coast  line  about  three  miles  far 
ther  seaward,  and  thus,  including  the  land  gained  by  the  filling  up  of  the 
lagoons,  to  add  more  than  five  hundred  square  miles  to  the  area  of  Egypt. 
Nor  is  this  all ;  for  the  retardation  of  the  current,  by  lengthening  the 
course  and  consequently  diminishing  the  inclination  of  the  channel,  would 
have  increased  the  deposit  of  suspended  matter,  and  proportionally  aug 
mented  the  total  effect  of  the  embankment. 


DEPOSITS    OF   THE    TUSCAN    KIVEKS  415 

almost  absolutely  depopulated,  and  the  malarious  fevers  have 
extended  their  ravages  far  into  the  interior. 

These  results  are  certainly  not  to  be  ascribed  wholly  to 
human  action.  They  are,  in  a  large  proportion,  due  to  geo 
logical  causes  over  which  man  has  no  control.  The  soil  of 

O 

much  of  Tuscany  becomes  pasty,  almost  fluid  even,  as  soon  as 
it  is  moistened,  and  when  thoroughly  saturated  with  water,  it 
flows  like  a  river.  Such  a  soil  as  this  would  not  be  completely 
protected  by  woods,  and,  indeed,  it  would  now  be  difficult  to 
confine  it  long  enough  to  allow  it  to  cover  itself  with  forest 
vegetation.  Nevertheless,  it  certainly  was  once  chiefly  wooded, 
and  the  rivers  which  flow  through  it  must  then  have  been 
much  less  charged  with  earthy  matter  than  at  present,  and 
they  must  have  carried  into  the  sea  a  smaller  proportion  of 
their  sediment  when  they  were  free  to  deposit  it  on  their  banks 
than  since  they  have  been  confined  by  dikes.* 

*  For  tlie  convenience  of  navigation,  and  to  lessen  the  clanger  of  inun 
dation  by  g  ving  greater  directness,  and,  of  course,  rapidity  to  the  current, 
bends  in  rrers  are  sometimes  cut  oif  and  winding  channels  made  straight. 
This  proces  has  the  same  general  effects  as  diking,  and  therefore  cannot 
be  employed  without  many  of  the  same  results. 

This  practice  has  often  been  resorted  to  on  the  Mississippi  with  advan 
tage  to  na^gation,  but  it  is  quite  another  question  whether  that  advantage 
has  not  b«en  too  dearly  purchased  by  the  injury  to  the  banks  at  lower 
points.  I:  we  suppose  a  river  to  have  a  navigable  course  of  1,000  miles 
as  measired  by  its  natural  channel,  with  a  descent  of  800  feet,  we  shall 
have  t  ;all  of  six  inches  to  the  mile.  If  the  length  of  channel  be  reduced 
to  1,2)0  miles  by  cutting  off  bends,  the  fall  is  increased  to  eight  inches  per 
mile.  The  augmentation  of  velocity  consequent  upon  this  increase  of  in- 
clinatbn  is  not  computable  without  taking  into  account  other  elements, 
such  s  depth  and  volume  of  water,  diminution  of  direct  resistance,  and 
the  Ike,  but  in  almost  any  supposable  case,  it  would  be  sufficient  to 
prodce  great  effects  on  the  height  of  floods,  the  deposit  of  sediment  in 
the  oannel,  on  the  shores,  and  at  the  outlet,  the  erosion  of  banks  and 
otherpoints  of  much  geographical  importance. 

Tie  Po,  in  those  parts  of  its  course  where  the  embankments  leave 
a  wie  space  between,  often  cuts  off  bends  in  its  channel  and  straightens 
its  curse.  These  short  cuts  are  called  aalti,  or  leaps,  and  sometimes 
redue  the  distance  between  their  termini  by  several  miles.  In  1777,  the 
salt<of  Cottaro  shortened  a  distance  of  7,000  metres  by  5,000,  or,  in  other 


416  PHYSICAL   RESTORATION    IN    TUSCANY. 

It  is,  in  general,  true,  that  the  intervention  of  man  has 
hitherto  seemed  to  insure  the  final  exhaustion,  ruin,  and  deso 
lation  of  every  province  of  nature  which  he  has  reduced  to  his 
dominion.  Attila  was  only  giving  an  energetic  and  pictu 
resque  expression  to  the  tendencies  of  human  action,  as  per 
sonified  in  himself,  when  he  said  that  "  no  grass  grew  where 
his  horse's  hoofs  had  trod."  The  instances  are  few,  where  a 
second  civilization  has  flourished  upon  the  ruins  of  an  ancient 
culture,  and  lands  once  rendered  uninhabitable  by  human  acts 
or  neglect  have  generally  been  forever  abandoned  as  hope 
lessly  irreclaimable.  It  is,  as  I  have  before  remarked,  a  ques 
tion  of  vast  importance,  how  far  it  is  practicable  to  restore  the 
garden  we  have  wasted,  and  it  is  a  problem  on  which  expe 
rience  throws  little  light,  because  few  deliberate  attempts  have 
yet  been  made  at  the  work  of  physical  regeneration,  on  a  scale 
large  enough  to  warrant  general  conclusions  in  any  one  class 
of  cases. 

The  valleys  and  shores  of  Tuscany  form,  however,  a  striking 
exception  to  this  remark.  The  success  with  which  human 
guidance  has  made  the  operations  of  nature  herself  available 
for  the  restoration  of  her  disturbed  harmonies,  in  tie  Yal  di 
Chiana  and  the  Tuscan  Maremma,  is  among  the  nobhst,  if  not 
the  most  brilliant  achievements  of  modern  engineering,  and, 
regarded  in  all  its  bearings  on  the  great  question  of  which  I 
have  just  spoken,  it  is,  as  an  example,  of  more  imporUnce  to 
the  general  interests  of  humanity  than  the  proudest  work  of 
internal  improvement  that  mechanical  means  have  yet  con 
structed.  The  operations  in  the  Val  di  Chiana  have  coniisted 
chiefly  in  so  regulating  the  flow  of  the  surface  wraters  int<  and 
through  it,  as  to  compel  them  to  deposit  their  seclimeitary 
matter  at  the  will  of  the  engineers,  and  thereby  to  *aise 
grounds  rendered  insalubrious  and  unfit  for  agricultural  use 
by  stagnating  water ;  the  improvements  in  the  Maremma  lave 
embraced  both  this  method  of  elevating  the  level  of  the  toil, 

words,  reduced  the  length  of  the  channel  more  than  three  miles ;  ad  in 
1807  and  1810  the  two  salti  of  Mezzanone  effected  a  reduction  of  disince 
to  the  amount  of  between  seven  and  eight  miles. — BATJMGARTEX,  1.  c.  p.138. 


THE   VAL   DI   CHIANA.  417 

and  the  prevention  of  the  mixture  of  salt  water  with  fresh  in 
the  coast  marshes  and  shallow  bays,  which  is  a  very  active 
cause  of  the  development  of  malarious  influences.* 

Improvements  in  the  Val  di  Chiana. 

For  twenty  miles  or  more  after  the  remotest  headwaters  of 
the  Arno  have  united  to  form  a  considerable  stream,  this  river 
flows  southeastward  to  the  vicinity  of  Arezzo.  It  here  sweeps 
round  to  the  northwest,  and  follows  that  course  to  near  its 
junction  with  the  Sieve,  a  few  miles  above  Florence,  from 
which  point  its  general  direction  is  westward  to  the  sea.  From 
the  bend  at  Arezzo,  a  depression  called  the  Yal  di  Chiana  runs 
southeastward  until  it  strikes  into  the  valley  of  the  Paglia,  a 
tributary  of  the  Tiber,  and  thus  connects  the  basin  of  the  latter 
river  with  that  of  the  Amo.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  and  down  to 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  Yal  di  Chiana  was  often  over 
flowed  and  devastated  by  the  torrents  which  poured  down 
from  the  highlands,  transporting  great  quantities  of  slime  with 
their  currents,  stagnating  upon  its  surface,  and  gradually  con 
verting  it  into  a  marshy  and  unhealthy  district,  which  was  at 
last  very  greatly  reduced  in  population  and  productiveness. 
It  had,  in  fact,  become  so  desolate  that  even  the  swallow  had 
deserted  it.f 

*  The  fact,  that  the  mixing  of  salt  and  fresh  water  in  coast  marshes  and 
lagoons  is  deleterious  to  the  sanitary  condition  of  the  vicinity,  seems  almost 
universally  admitted,  though  the  precise  reason  why  a  mixture  of  both 
should  be  more  injurious  than  either  alone,  is  not  altogether  clear.  It  has 
been  suggested  that  the  admission  of  salt  water  to  the  lagoons  and  rivers 
kills  many  fresh  water  plants  and  animals,  while  the  fresh  water  is  equally 
fatal  to  many  marine  organisms,  and  that  the  decomposition  of  the  remains 
originates  poisonous  miasmata.  Other  theories  however  have  been  pro 
posed.  The  whole  subject  is  fully  and  ably  discussed  by  Dr.  Salvagnoli 
March etti  in  the  appendix  to  his  valuable  Itapporto  sul  Bonificamento  delle 
Maremme  Toscane.  See  also'  the  Memorie  Economico-StatisticJie  sulle  Ma- 
remme  Toscane,  of  the  same  author. 

t  This  curious  fact  is  thus  stated  in   the  preface    to    Fossombroni 
(Memorie  sopra  la  Val  di  CMana,  edition  of  1835,  p.  xiii),  from  which 
also  I  borrow  most  of  the  data  hereafter  given  with  respect  to  that  valley 
"  It  is  perhaps  not  universally  known,  that  the  swallows,  which  come  from 
27 


4:18  THE    VAL    DI    CHIANA. 

The  "bed  of  the  Arno  near  Arezzo  and  that  of  the  Paglia  at 
the  southern  extremity  of  the  Yal  di  Chiana  did  not  differ 

the  north  [south]  to  spend-  the  summer  in  our  climate,  do  not  frequent 
marshy  districts  with  a  malarious  atmosphere.  A  proof  of  the  restoration 
of  salubrity  in  the  Val  di  Chiana  is  furnished  by  these  aerial  visitors,  which 
had  never  before  been  seen  in  those  low  grounds,  but  which  have  appeared 
within  a  few  years  at  Forano  and  other  points  similarly  situated." 

Is  the  air  of  swamps  destructive  to  the  swallows,  or  is  their  absence  in 
such  localities  merely  due  to  the  want  of  human  habitations,  near  which 
this  half-domestic  bird  loves  to  breed,  perhaps  because  the  house  fly  and 
other  insects  which  follow  man  are  found  only  in  the  vicinity  of  his 
dwellings  ? 

In  almost  all  European  countries,  the  swallow  is  protected,  by  popular 
opinion  or  superstition,  from  the  persecution  to  which  almost  all  other  birds 
are  subject.  It  is  possible  that  this  respect  for  the  swallow  is  founded 
upon  ancient  observation  of  the  fact  just  stated  on  the  authority  of  Fos- 
sornbroni.  Ignorance  mistakes  the  effect  for  the  cause,  and  the  absence  of 
this  bird  may  have  been  supposed  to  be  the  occasion,  not  the  consequence, 
of  the  unhealthiness  of  particular  localities.  This  opinion  once  adopted, 
the  swallow  would  become  a  sacred  bird,  and  in  process  of  time  fables  and 
legends  would  be  invented  to  give  additional  sanction  to  the  prejudices 
which  protected  it.  The  Romans  considered  the  swallow  as  consecrated 
to  the  Penates,  or  household  gods,  and  according  to  Peretti  (Le  Serate  del 
Villaggio,  p.  168)  the  Lombard  peasantry  think  it  a  sin  to  kill  them,  be 
cause  they  are  le  gallinelle  del  Signore,  the  chickens  of  the  Lord. 

The  following  little  Tuscan  rispetto  from  Gradi  (Racconti  Popolari,  p. 
33)  well  expresses  the  feeling  of  the  peasantry  toward  this  bird  : 

O  rondinella  che  passi  lo  mare 

Torna  'ndietro,  vo'  dirti  du'  parole ;  ^ 

Dammi  'na  penna  delle  tue  bell'  ale, 

Vo'  scrivere  'na  lettera  al  mi'  amore ; 

E  quando  1'  avro  scritta  'n  carta  bella, 

Ti  rendero  la  penna,  o  rondinella ; 

E  quando  1'  avro  scritta  'n  carta  bianca, 

Ti  rondero  la  penna  clae  ti  manca  ; 

E  quando  1'  avro  scritta  in  carta  d'  oro, 

Ti  rendero  la  penna  al  tuo  bel  volo. 

O  swallow,  that  flicst  beyond  the  sea, 

Turn  back  I  I  would  fain  have  a  word  with  thoe. 

A  feather  oh  grant,  from  thy  wing  so  bright ! 

For  I  to  my  sweetheart  a  letter  would  write  ; 

And  when  it  is  written  on  paper  fina 

I'll  give  thee,  O  swallow,  that  feather  of  thine ; 

—On  paper  so  white,  and  I'll  give  thee  back, 

O  pretty  swallow,  the  pen  thou  dost  lack ; 

— On  paper  of  gold,  and  then  I'll  restore 

To  thy  beautiful  pinion  the  feather  once  more. 


THE   VAL   DI   CHIANA.  419 

much  in  level.  The  general  inclination  of  the  valley  was 
therefore  small ;  it  does  not  appear  to  have  ever  been  divided 
into  opposite  slopes  by  a  true  watershed,  and  the  position  of 
the  summit  seems  to  have  shifted  according  to  the  varying 
amount  and  place  of  deposit  of  the  sediment  brought  down 
by  the  lateral  streams  which  emptied  into  it.  The  length  of 
its  principal  channel  of  drainage,  and  even  the  direction  of  its 
flow  at  any  given  point,  were  therefore  fluctuating.  Hence, 
much  difference  of  opinion  was  entertained  at  different  times 
with  regard  to  the  normal  course  of  this  stream,  and,  conse 
quently,  to  the  question  whether  it  was  to  be  regarded  as  prop 
erly  an  affluent  of  the  Tiber  or  of  the  Arno. 

The  bed  of  the  latter  river  at  the  bend  has  been  eroded  to 
the  depth  of  thirty  or  forty  feet,  and  that,  apparently,  at  no 
very  remote  period.  If  it  were  elevated  to  what  was  evidently 
its  original  height,  the  current  of  the  Arno  would  be  so  much 
above  that  of  the  Paglia  as  to  allow  of  a  regular  flow  from  its 
channel  to  the  latter  stream,  through  the  Yal  di  Chiana,  pro 
vided  the  bed  of  the  valley  had  remained  at  the  level  which 
excavations  prove  it  to  have  had  a  few  centuries  ago,  before  it 
was  raised  by  the  deposits  I  have  mentioned.  These  facts, 
together  with  the  testimony  of  ancient  geographers  which 
scarcely  admits  of  any  other  explanation,  are  thought  to  prove 
that  all  the  waters  of  the  Upper  Arno  were  originally  dis 
charged  through  the  Yal  di  Chiana  into  the  Tiber,  and  that  a 
part  of  them  still  continued  to  flow,  at  least  occasionally,  in 
that  direction  down  to  the  days  of  the  Roman  empire,  and 
perhaps  for  some  time  later.  The  depression  of  the  bed  of  the 
Arno,  and  the  raising  of  that  of  the  valley  by  the  deposits  of 
the  lateral  torrents  and  of  the  Arno  itself,  finally  cut  off  the 
branch  of  the  river  which  had  flowed  to  the  Tiber,  and  all  its 

Popular  traditions  and  superstitions  are  so  closely  connected  with  local 
ities,  that,  though  an  emigrant  people  may  carry  them  to  a  foreign  land, 
they  seldom  survive  a  second  generation.  The  swallow,  however,  is  still 
protected  in  New  England  "by  prejudices  of  transatlantic  origin ;  and  I 
remember  hearing,  in  my  childhood,  that  if  the  swallows  were  killed,  the 
cows  would  give  bloody  milk. 


420  THE   VAL   DI   CHI  ANA. 

waters  were  turned  into  its  present  channel,  though  the  prin 
cipal  drainage  of  the  Yal  di  Chiana  appears  to  have  been  in  a 
southeastwardly  direction  until  within  a  comparatively  recent 
period. 

In  the  sixteenth  century,  the  elevation  of  the  bed  of  the 
valley  had  become  so  considerable,  that  in  1551,  at  a  point 
about  ten  miles  south  of  the  Arno,  it  was  found  to  be  not  less 
than  one  hundred  and  thirty  feet  above  that  river ;  then  fol 
lowed  a  level  of  ten  miles,  and  then  a  continuous  descent  to 
the  Paglia.  Along  the  level  portion  of  the  valley  was  a  boat- 
able  channel,  and  lakes,  sometimes  a  mile  or  even  two  miles 
in  breadth,  had  formed  at  various  points  farther  south.  At 
this  period,  the  drainage  of  the  summit  level  might  easily 
have  been  determined  in  either  direction,  and  the  opposite 
descents  of  the  valley  made  to  culminate  at  the  north  or  at  the 
south  end  of  the  level.  In  the  former  case,  the  watershed 
would  have  been  ten  miles  south  of  the  Arno  ;  in  the  latter, 
twenty  miles,  and  the  division  would  have  been  not  very 
unequal. 

Various  schemes  were  suggested  at  this  time  for  drawing 
off  the  stagnant  waters,  as  well  as  for  the  future  regular  drain 
age  of  the  valley,  and  small  operations  for  those  purposes  were 
undertaken  with  partial  success ;  but  it  was  feared  that  the 
discharge  of  the  accumulated  waters  into  the  Tiber  would  pro 
duce  a  dangerous  inundation,  while  the  diversion  of  the  drain 
age  into  the  Arno  would  increase  the  violence  of  the  floods  to 
which  that  river  was  very  subject,  arid  no  decisive  steps  were 
taken.  In  1606,  an  engineer  whose  name  has  not  been  pre 
served  proposed,  as  the  only  possible  method  of  improvement, 
the  piercing  of  a  tunnel  through  the  hills  bounding  the  valley 
on  the  west  to  convey  its  waters  to  the  Ombrone,  but  the 
expense  and  other  objections  prevented  the  adoption  of  this 
project.*  The  fears  of  the  Roman  Government  for  the  security 
of  the  valley  of  the  Tiber  had  induced  it  to  construct  barriers 
across  that  part  of  the  channel  which  lay  within  its  territory, 

*  MOBOZZI,  Delia  state  antico  e  moderno  delfiume  Arno,  ii,  p.  42. 


THE    VAL   DI   CHI  AN  A.  421 

and  these  obstructions,  though  not  specifically  intended  for 
that  purpose,  naturally  promoted  the  deposit  of  sediment  and 
the  elevation  of  the  bed  of  the  valley  in  their  neighborhood. 
The  effect  of  this  measure  and  of  the  continued  spontaneous 
action  of  the  torrents  was,  that  the  northern  slope,  which  in 
1551  had  commenced  at  the  distance  of  ten  miles  from  the 
Aruo.  was  found  in  1605  to  begin  nearly  thirty  miles  south  of 
that  river,  and  in  1645  it  had  been  removed  about  six  miles 
farther  in  the  same  direction.* 

In  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Tuscan  and  Papal  Govern 
ments  consulted  Galileo,  Torricelli,  Castelli,  Cassini,  Yiviani, 
and  other  distinguished  philosophers  and  engineers,  on  the  pos 
sibility  of  reclaiming  the  valley  by  a  regular  artificial  drainage. 
Most  of  these  eminent  physicists  were  of  opinion  that  the 
measure  was  impracticable,  though  not  altogether  for  the  same 
reasons ;  but  they  seem  to  have  agreed  in  thinking  that  the 
opening  of  such  channels,  in  either  direction,  as  would  give  the 
current  a  flow  sufficiently  rapid  to  drain  the  lands  properly, 
would  dangerously  augment  the  inundations  of  the  river — 
whether  the  Tiber  or  the  Arno — into  which  the  waters  should 
be  turned.  The  general  improvement  of  the  valley  was  now 
for  a  long  time  abandoned,  and  the  waters  were  allowed  to 
spread  and  stagnate  until  carried  oft  by  partial  drainage,  infil 
tration,  and  evaporation.  Torricelli  had  contended  that  the 
slope  of  a  large  part  of  the  valley  was  too  small  to  allow  it  to 
be  drained  by  ordinary  methods,  and  that  no  practicable  depth 
and  width  of  canal  would  suffice  for  that  purpose.  It  could 
be  laid  dry,  he  thought,  only  by  converting  its  surface  into  an 
inclined  plane,  and  he  suggested  that  this  might  be  accom 
plished  by  controlling  the  flow  of  the  numerous  torrents  which 
pour  into  it,  so  as  to  force  them  to  deposit  their  sediment  at 
the  pleasure  of  the  engineer,  and,  consequently,  to  elevate  the 
level  of  the  area  over  which  it  should  be  spread. f  This  plan. 

*  MOEOZZI,  Dcllo  stato,  etc.,  dcWArno,  ii,  pp.  39,  40. 

t  Torricelli  thus  expressed  himself  on  this  point :  "  If  we  content  our 
selves  with  what  nature  has  made  practicable  to  human  industry,  we  shall 
endeavor  to  control,  as  far  as  possible,  the  outlets  of  these  streams,  which, 


422  THE   VAL   DI   CHIANA. 

did  not  meet  with  immediate  general  acceptance,  but  it  was 
soon  adopted  for  local  purposes  at  some  points  in  the  southern 
part  of  the  valley,  and  it  gradually  grew  in  public  favor  and 
was  extended  in  application  until  its  final  triumph  a  hundred 
years  later. 

In  spite  of  these  encouraging  successes,  however,  the  fear 
of  danger  to  the  valley  of  the  Arno  and  the  Tiber,  and  the 
difficulty  of  an  agreement  between  Tuscany  and  Home — the 
boundary  between  which  states  crossed  the  Yal  di  Chiaua  not 
far  from  the  halfway  point  between  the  two  rivers — and  of 
reconciling  other  conflicting  interests,  prevented  the  resump 
tion  of  the  projects  for  the  general  drainage  of  the  valley  until 
after  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  the  mean  time 
the  science  of  hydraulics  had  become  better  understood,  and 
the  establishment  of  the  natural  law  according  to  which  the 
velocity  of  a  current  of  water,  and  of  course  the  proportional 
quantity  discharged  by  it  in  a  given  time,  are  increased  by 
increasing  its  mass,  had  diminished  if  not  dissipated  the  fear 
of  exposing  the  banks  of  the  Arno  to  greater  danger  from 
inundations  by  draining  the  Yal  di  Chiana  into  it. 

The  suggestion  of  Torricelli  wTas  finally  adopted  as  the  basis 
of  a  comprehensive  system  of  improvement,  and  it  was  decided 
to  continue  and  extend  the  inversion  of  the  original  flow  of  the 
waters,  and  to  turn  them  into  the  Arno  from  a  point  as  far  to 
the  south  as  should  be  found  practicable.  The  conduct  of  the 
works  was  committed  to  a  succession  of  able  engineers  who, 
for  a  long  series  of  years,  wrere  under  the  general  direction  of 
the  celebrated  philosopher  and  statesman  Fossombroni,  and  the 
success  has  fully  justified  the  expectations  of  the  most  sanguine 
advocates  of  the  scheme.  The  plan  of  improvement  embraced 
two  branches  :  the  one,  the  removal  of  certain  obstructions  in 
the  bed  of  the  Arno,  and,  consequently,  the  further  depression 
of  the  channel  of  that  river,  in  certain  places,  with  the  view 

by  raising  the  bed  of  the  valley  with  their  deposits,  will  realize  the  fable 
of  the  Tagus  and  the  Pactolus,  and  truly  roll  golden  sands  for  him  that  is 
wise  enough  to  avail  himself  of  them." — FOSSOMBRONI,  Memorie  sopra  la 
Val  di  Chiana,  p.  210. 


THE   VAL   DI   CHIANA.  423 

of  increasing  the  rapidity  of  its  current ;  the  other,  the  gradual 
filling  up  of  the  ponds  and  swamps,  and  raising  of  the  lower 
grounds  of  the  Yal  di  Chiana,  by  directing  to  convenient 
points  the  flow  of  the  streams  which  pour  down  into  it,  and 
there  confining  their  waters  by  temporary  dams  until  the  sedi 
ment  was  deposited  where  it  was  needed.  The  economical 
result  of  these  operations  has  been,  that  in  1835  an  area  of 
more  than  four  hundred  and  fifty  square  miles  of  pond,  marsh, 
and  damp,  sickly  low  grounds  had  been  converted  into  fer 
tile,  healthy  and  well-drained  soil,  and,  consequently,  that  so 
much  territory  has  been  added  to  the  agricultural  domain 
of  Tuscany. 

But  in  our  present  view  of  the  subject,  the  geographical 
revolution  which  has  been  accomplished  is  still  more  interest 
ing.  The  climatic  influence  of  the  elevation  and  draining  of 
the  soil  must  have  been  considerable,  though  I  do  not  know 
that  an  increase  or  a  diminution  of  the  mean  temperature  or 
precipitation  in  the  valley  has  been  established  by  meteoro 
logical  observation.  There  is,  however,  in  the  improvement 
of  the  sanitary  condition  of  the  Yal  di  Chiana,  which  was  for 
merly  extremely  unhealthy,  satisfactory  proof  of  a  beneficial 
climatic  change.  The  fevers,  which  not  only  decimated  the 
population  of  the  low  grounds  but  infested  the  adjacent  hills, 
have  ceased  their  ravages,  and  are  now  not  more  frequent  than 
in  other  parts  of  Tuscany.  The  strictly  topographical  effect 
of  the  operations  in  question,  besides  the  conversion  of  marsh 
into  dry  surface,  has  been  the  inversion  of  the  inclination  of 
the  valley  for  a  distance  of  thirty-five  miles,  so  that  this  great 
plain  which,  within  a  comparatively  short  period,  sloped  and 
drained  its  waters  to  the  south,  now  inclines  and  sends  its 
drainage  to  the  north.  The  reversal  of  the  currents  of  the 
valley  has  added  to  the  Arno  a  new  tributary  equal  to  the 
largest  of  its  former  affluents,  and  a  most  important  circum 
stance  connected  with  this  latter  fact  is,  that  the  increase  of 
the  volume  of  its  waters  has  accelerated  their  velocity  in  a  still 
greater  proportion,  and,  instead  of  augmenting  the  danger  from 
its  inundations,  has  almost  wholly  obviated  that  source  of 


424:  THE    TUSCAN    MAEEMMA. 

apprehension.  Between  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century 
and  the  year  1761,  thirty-one  destructive  floods  of  the  Arno 
are  recorded ;  between  1761,  when  the  principal  streams  of  the 
Yal  di  Ghiana  wTere  diverted  into  that  river,  and  1835,  not 
one.* 

Improvements  in  the  Tuscan  Maremme. 

In  the  improvements  of  the  Tuscan  Marernma,  more  formi 
dable  difficulties  have  been  encountered.  The  territory  to  be 
reclaimed  was  more  extensive;  the  salubrious  places  of  retreat 
for  laborers  and  inspectors  were  more  remote;  the  courses  of 
the  rivers  to  be  controlled  were  longer  and  their  natural  in 
clination  less  rapid ;  some  of  them,  rising  in  wooded  regions, 
transported  comparatively  little  earthy  matter,  f  and  above  all, 

*  Arrian  observes  that  at  the  junction  of  the  Hydaspcs  and  the  Acesines, 
both  of  which  are  described  as  wide  streams,  "one  very  narrow  river  is 
formed  of  two  confluents,  and  its  current  is  very  swift." — AKKIAX,  Alex. 
Ancib.,  vi,  4. 

A  like  example  is  observed  in  the  Anapus  near  Syracuse,  which,  below 
the  junction  of  its  two  branches,  is  narrower,  though  swifter  than  either 
of  them,  and  such  cases  are  by  no  means  unfrequent.  The  immediate 
effect  of  the  confluence  of  two  rivers  upon  the  current  below  depends 
upon  local  circumstances,  and  especially  upon  the  angle  of  incidence. 
If  the  two  nearly  coincide  in  direction,  so  as  to  include  a  small  angle,  the 
joint  current  will  have  a  greater  velocity  than  the  slower  confluent,  per 
haps  even  than  either  of  them.  If  the  two  rivers  run  in  transverse,  still 
more  if  they  flow  in  more  or  less  opposite  directions,  the  velocity  of  the 
principal  branch  will  be  retarded  both  above  and  below  the  junction,  and 
at  high  water  it  may  even  set  back  the  current  of  the  affluent. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  diversion  of  a  considerable  branch  from  a  river 
retards  its  velocity  below  the  point  of  separation,  and  here  a  deposit  of 
earth  in  its  channel  immediately  begins,  which  has  a  tendency  to  turn  the 
whole  stream  into  the  new  bed.  "  Theory  and  the  authority  of  all  hydro- 
graphical  writers  combine  lo  show  that  the  channels  of  rivers  undergo  an 
elevation  of  bed  below  a  canal  of  diversion." — Letter  of  FOSSOMRRONI,  in 
SALVAGNOLI,  Raccolta  di  Document^  p.  32.  See  the  early  authorities  and  dis 
cussions  on  the  principle  stated  in  the  text,  in  FEISI,  Del  modo  di  rcgolare  i 
Fiumi  e  i  Torrenti,  libro  iii,  capit.  i. 

t  This  difficulty  has  been  remedied  as  to  one  important  river  of  the 
Maremma,  the  Pecora,  by  clearings  recently  executed  along  its  upper 


THE   TUSCAN   MAREMMA.  425 

the  coast,  which  is  a  recent  deposit  of  the  waters,  is  little 
elevated  above  the  sea,  and  admits  into  its  lagoons  and  the 
mouths  of  its  rivers  floods  of  salt  water  with  every  western 
wind,  every  rising  tide.* 

The  western  coast  of  Tuscany  is  not  supposed  to  have  been 
an  unhealthy  region  before  the  conquest  of  Etruria  by  the 
Romans,  but  it  certainly  became  so  within  a  few  centuries 
after  that  event.  This  was  a  natural  consequence  of  the  neg 
lect  or  wanton  destruction  of  the  public  improvements,  and 
especially  the  hydraulic  works  in  which  the  Etruscans  were  so 
skilful,  and  of  the  felling  of  the  upland  forests,  to  satisfy  the 
demand  for  wood  at  Rome  for  domestic,  industrial,  and  mil 
itary  purposes.  After  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  empire,  the 
incursions  of  the  barbarians,  and  then  feudalism,  foreign  dom 
ination,  intestine  wars,  arid  temporal  and  spiritual  tyrannies, 

course.  "  The  condition  of  this  marsh  and  of  its  affluents  are  now,  No 
vember,  1859,  much  changed,  and  it  is  advisable  to  prosecute  its  improve 
ment  by  deposits.  In  consequence  of  the  extensive  felling  of  the  woods 
upon  the  plains,  hills,  and  mountains  of  the  territory  of  Massa  and  Scarlino, 
within  the  last  ten  years,  the  Pec£>ra  and  other  affluents  of  the  marsh 
receive,  during  the  rains,  water  abundantly  charged  with  slime,  so  that 
the  deposits  within  the  first  division  of  the  marsh  are  already  considerable, 
and  we  may  now  hope  to  see  the  whole  marsh  and  pond  filled  up  in  a  much 
shorter  time  than  we  had  a  right  to  expect  before  1850.  This  circumstance 
totally  changes  the  terms  of  the  question,  because  the  filling  of  the  marsh 
and  pond,  which  then  seemed  almost  impossible  on  account  of  the  small 
amount  of  sediment  deposited  by  the  Pecora,  has  now  become  practicable." 
— SALVAGXOLI,  Ra2)porto  sul  Bonifi-amcnto  delle  Maremme  Toscane,  pp. 
li,  lii. 

The  annual  amount  of  sediment  brought  down  by  the  rivers  of  the 
Maremma  is  computed  at  more  than  12,000,000  cubic  yards,  or  enough  to 
raise  an  area  of  four  square  miles  one  yard.  Between  1830  and  1859  more 
than  three  times  that  quantity  was  deposited  in  the  marsh  and  shoal  water 
lake  of  Oastiglione  alone. — SALVAGNOLI,  Raccolta  di  Documenti,  pp.  74,  75. 

*  The  tide  rises  ten  inches  on  the  coast  of  Tuscany.  See  Memoir  by 
FANTOXI,  in  the  appendix  to  SALVAGNOLI,  JRapporto,  p.  189. 

On  the  tides  of  the  Mediterranean,  see  BOTTGEE,  Das  Mittelmecr,  p.  190. 
Not  having  Admiral  Smyth's  Mediterranean — on  which  Bottger's  work  is 
founded — at  hand,  I  do  not  know  how  far  credit  is  due  to  the  former  author 
for  the  matter  contained  in  the  chapter  referred  to. 


426  THE  TUSCAN   MAREMMA. 

aggravated  still  more  cruelly  the  moral  and  physical  evils 
which  Tuscany  and  the  other  Italian  States  were  doomed  to 
suffer,  and  from  which  they  have  enjoyed  but  brief  respites 
during  the  whole  period  of  modern  history.  The  Maremma 
was  already  proverbially  unhealthy  in  the  time  of  Dante,  who 
refers  to  the  fact  in  several  familiar  passages,  and  the  petty 
tyrants  upon  its  borders  often  sent  criminals  to  places  of  con 
finement  in  its  territory,  as  a  slow  but  certain  mode  of  execu 
tion.  Ignorance  of  the  causes  of  the  insalubrity,  and  often  the 
interference  of  private  rights,*  prevented  the  adoption  of  meas 
ures  to  remove  it,  and  the  growing  political  and  commercial 
importance  of  the  large  towns  in  more  healthful  localities 
absorbed  the  attention  of  Government,  and  deprived  the  Ma 
remma  of  its  just  share  in  the  systems  of  physical  improvement 
which  were  successfully  adopted  in  interior  and  Northern  Italy. 
Before  any  serious  attempts  were  made  to  drain  or  fill  up 
the  marshes  of  the  Maremme,  various  other  sanitary  exper 
iments  were  tried.  It  was  generally  believed  that  the  insa 
lubrity  of  the  province  was  the  consequence,  not  the  cause, 
of  its  depopulation,  and  that,  if  it  were  once  densely  inhab 
ited,  the  ordinary  operations  of  agriculture,  and  especially  the 

*  In  Catholic  countries,  the  discipline  of  the  church  requires  a  meagre 
diet  at  certain  seasons,  and  as  fish  is  not  flesh,  there  is  a  great  demand  for 
that  article  of  food  at  those  periods.  For  the  convenience  of  monasteries 
and  their  patrons,  and  as  a  source  of  pecuniary  emolument  to  ecclesiastical 
establishments  and  sometimes  to  lay  proprietors,  great  numbers  of  artificial 
fish  ponds  were  created  during  the  Middle  Ages.  They  were  generally 
shallow  pools  formed  by  damming  up  the  outlet  of  marshes,  and  they  were 
among  the  most  fruitful  sources  of  endemic  disease,  and  of  the  peculiar 
malignity  of  the  epidemics  which  so  often  ravaged  Europe  in  those  cen 
turies.  These  ponds,  in  religious  hands,  were  too  sacred  to  be  infringed 
upon  for  sanitary  purposes,  and  when  belonging  to  powerful  lay  lords  they 
were  almost  as  inviolable.  The  rights  of  fishery  were  a  standing  obstacle 
to  every  proposal  of  hydraulic  improvement,  and  to  this  day  large  and 
fertile  districts  in  Southern  Europe  remain  sickly  and  almost  unimproved 
and  uninhabited,  because  the  draining  of  the  ponds  upon  them  would 
reduce  the  income  of  proprietors  who  derive  large  profits  by  supplying  the 
faithful,  in  Lent,  with  fish,  and  with  various  species  of  waterfowl  which, 
though  very  fat,  are,  ecclesiastically  speaking,  meagre. 


THE   TUSCAN    MAE.EMMA.  427 

maintenance  of  numerous  domestic  fires,  would  restore  it  to  ita 
ancient  healthfullness.*  In  accordance  with  these  views,  set 
tlers  were  invited  from  various  parts  of  Italy,  from  Greece, 
and,  after  the  accession  of  the  Lorraine  princes,  from  that 
country  also,  and  colonized  in  the  Maremme.  To  strangers 
coming  from  soils  and  skies  so  unlike  those  of  the  Tuscan 
marshes,  the  climate  was  more  fatal  than  to  the  inhabitants  of 
the  neighboring  districts,  whose  constitutions  had  become  in 
some  degree  inured  to  the  local  influences,  or  who  at  least 
knew  better  how  to  guard  against  them.  The  consequence 
very  naturally  was  that  the  experiment  totally  failed  to  pro 
duce  the  desired  effects,  and  was  attended  with  a  great  sacri 
fice  of  life  and  a  heavy  loss  to  the  treasury  of  the  state. 

The  territory  known  as  the  Tuscan  Maremma,  ora  mari- 
tima,  or  Maremme — for  the  plural  form  is  most  generally  used 
— lies  upon  and  near  the  western  coast  of  Tuscany,  and  com 
prises  about  1,900  square  miles  English,  of  which  500  square 
miles,  or  320,000  acres,  are  plain  and  marsh  including  45,500 
acres  of  water  surface,  and  about  290,000  acres  are  forest. 
One  of  the  mountain  peaks,  that  of  Mount  Amiata,  rises  to  the 
height  of  6,280  feet.  The  mountains  of  the  Maremma  are 
healthy,  the  lower  hills  much  less  so,  as  the  malaria  is  felt  at 
some  points  at  the  height  of  1,000  feet,  and  the  plains,  with 
the  exception  of  a  few  localities  favorably  situated  011  the  sea- 
coast,  are  in  a  high  degree  pestilential.  The  fixed  population 
is  about  80,000,  of  whom  one  sixth  live  on  the  plains  in  the 
winter  and  about  one  tenth  in  the  summer.  Nine  or  ten  thou 
sand  laborers  come  down  from  the  mountains  of  the  Maremma 
and  the  neighboring  provinces  into  the  plain,  during  the  latter 
season,  to  cultivate  and  gather  the  crops. 

Out  of  this  small  number  of  inhabitants  and  strangers, 
35,619  were  ill  enough  to  require  medical  treatment  between 
the  1st  of  June,  1840,  and  the  1st  of  June,  1841,  and  more 
than  one  half  the  cases  were  of  intermittent,  malignant,  gas- 

*  Haccliiavelli  advised  the  Government  of  Tuscany  "  to  provide  that 
meii  should  restore  the  wholesoineness  of  the  soil  by  cultivation,  and 
purify  the  air  by  fires." — SALVAQKOLI,  Memorie,  p.  111. 


428  IMPROVEMENTS    IN   LUCCA. 

trie,  or  catarrhal  fever.  Very  few  agricultural  laborers  escaped 
fever,  though  the  disease  did  not  always  manifest  itself  until 
they  had  returned  to  the  mountains.  In  the  province  of  Gros- 
seto,  which  embraces  nearly  the  whole  of  the  Maremma,  the 
annual  mortality  was  3.92  per  cent,  the  average  duration  of 
life  but  23.18  years,  and  75  per  cent,  of  the  deaths  were  among 
persons  engaged  in  agriculture. 

The  filling  up  of  the  low  grounds  and  the  partial  separa 
tion  of  the  waters  of  the  sea  and  the  land,  which  had  been  in 
progress  since  the  year  1827,  now  began  to  show  very  decided 
effects  upon  the  sanitary  condition  of  the  population.  In  the 
year  ending  June  1st,  1842,  the  number  of  the  sick  was  re 
duced  by  more  than  2,000,  and  the  cases  of  fever  by  more  than 
4,000.  The  next  year,  the  cases  of  fever  fell  to  10,500,  and  in 
that  ending  June  1st,  1844,  to  9,200.  The  political  events  of 
1848  and  the  preceding  and  following  years,  occasioned  the 
suspension  of  the  works  of  improvement  in  the  Maremma,  but 
they  were  resumed  after  the  revolution  of  1859,  and  are  now 
in  successful  progress. 

I  have  spoken,  with  some  detail,  of  the  improvements  in 
the  Yal  di  Chiana  and  the  Tuscan  Maremma,  because  of  their 
great  relative  importance,  and  because  their  history  is  well 
known ;  but  like  operations  have  been  executed  in  the  terri 
tory  of  Pisa  and  upon  the  coast  of  the  duchy  of  Lucca.  In 
the  latter  case,  they  were  confined  principally  to  prevention 
of  the  intermixing  of  fresh  water  with  that  of  the  sea.  In 
1741,  sluices  or  lock  gates  were  constructed  for  this  purpose, 
and  the  following  year,  the  fevers,  which  had  been  destructive 
to  the  coast  population  for  a  long  time  previous,  disappeared 
altogether.  In  1768  and  1769,  the  works  having  fallen  to 
decay,  the  fevers  returned  in  a  very  malignant  form,  but  the 
rebuilding  of  the  gates  again  restored  the  healthfulness  of  the 
shore.  Similar  facts  recurred  in  1784  and  1785,  and  again 
from  1804  to  1821.  This  long  and  repeated  experience  has  at 
last  impressed  upon  the  people  the  necessity  of  vigilant  atten 
tion  to  the  sluices,  which  are  now  kept  in  constant  repair. 
The  health  of  the  coast  is  uninterrupted,  and  Yiareggio,  the 


COLLATERAL    EFFECTS    OF   WORKS   IN    VAL    DI   CIIIANA.        429 

capital  town  of  the  district,  is  now  much  frequented  for  its  sea 
baths  and  its  general  salubrity,  at  a  season  when  formerly  it 
was  justly  shunned  as  the  abode  of  disease  and  death.* 

It  is  now  a  hundred  years  since  the  commencement  of  the 
improvements  in  the  Yal  di  Chiana,  and  those  of  the  Ma- 
remina  have  been  in  more  or  less  continued  operation  for 
above  a  generation.  They  have,  as  we  have  seen,  produced 
important  geographical  changes  in  the  surface  of  the  earth 
and  in  the  flow  of  considerable  rivers,  and  their  effects  have 
been  not  less  conspicuous  in  preventing  other  changes,  of  a 
deleterious  character,  which  would  infallibly  have  taken  place 
if  they  had  not  been  arrested  by  the  improvements  in  ques 
tion.  It  has  been  already  stated  that,  in  order  to  prevent  the 
overflow  of  the  valley  of  the  Tiber  by  freely  draining  the  Yal 
di  Chiana  into  it,  the  Papal  authorities,  long  before  the  com 
mencement  of  the  Tuscan  works,  constructed  strong  barriers 
near  the  southern  end  of  the  valley,  which  detained  the  waters 
of  the  wet  season  until  they  could  be  gradually  drawn  off  into 
the  Paglia.  They  consequently  deposited  most  of  their  sedi 
ment  in  the  Yal  di  Chiana  and  carried  down  comparatively 
little  earth  to  the  Tiber.  The  lateral  streams  contributing  the 
largest  quantities  of  sedimentary  matter  to  the  Yal  di  Chiana 
originally  flowed  into  that  valley  near  its  northern  end  ;  and 
the  change  of  their  channels  and  outlets  in  a  southern  direc 
tion,  so  as  to  raise  that  part  of  the  valley  by  their  deposits  and 
thereby  reverse  its  drainage,  was  one  of  the  principal  steps  in 
the  process  of  improvement. 

"We  have  seen  that  the  north  end  of  the  Yal  di  Chiana 
near  the  Arno  had  been  raised  by  spontaneous  deposit  of 
sediment  to  such  a  height  as  to  interpose  a  sufficient  ob 
stacle  to  all  flow  in  that  direction.  If,  then,  the  Roman 
dam  had  not  been  erected,  or  the  works  of  the  Tuscan 
Government  undertaken,  the  whole  of  the  earth,  which  has 
been  arrested  by  those  works  and  employed  to  raise  the  bed 

*  GIORGIXI,  Sur  les  causes  de  Vlmalubrite  de  Vair  dans  le  wisinage  des 
marais,  etc,.,  lue  d  VAcademie  des  Sciences  d  Paris,  le  12  Juillet,  1825.  Re 
printed  in  SALVAONOLI,  Rapporto,  etc.,  appendice,  p.  5,  et  seqq. 


4:30  KIVEE   MOUTHS. 

and  reverse  the  declivity  of  the  valley,  would  have  been  ear 
ried  down  to  the  Tiber  and  thence  into  the  sea.  The  deposit 
thus  created,  would,  of  course,  have  contributed  to  increase 
the  advance  of  the  shore  at  the  mouth  of  that  river, which  has 
long  been  going  on  at  the  rate  of  three  metres  and  nine  tenths 
(twelve  feet  and  nine  inches)  per  annum. *  It  is  evident  that 
a  quantity  of  earth,  sufficient  to  effect  the  immense  changes  I 
have  described  in  a  wide  valley  more  than  thirty  miles  long, 
if  deposited  at  the  outlet  of  the  Tiber,  would  have  very  consid 
erably  modified  the  outline  of  the  coast,  and  have  exerted  no 
unimportant  influence  on  the  flow  of  that  river,  by  raising  its 
point  of  discharge  and  lengthening  its  channel. 

The  sediment  washed  into  the  marshes  of  the  Maremme  is 
not  less  than  12,000,000  cubic  yards  per  annum.  The  escape 
of  this  quantity  into  the  sea,  which  is  now  almost  wholly  pre 
vented,  would  be  sufficient  to  advance  the  coast  line  fourteen 
yards  per  year,  for  a  distance  of  forty  miles,  computing  the 
mean  depth  of  the  sea  near  the  shore  at  twelve  yards.  It  is 
true  that  in  this  case,  as  well  as  in  that  of  other  rivers,  the 
sedimentary  matter  would  not  be  distributed  equally  along 
the  shore,  and  much  of  it  would  be  carried  out  into  deep 
water,  or  perhaps  transported  by  the  currents  to  distant  coasts. 
The  immediate  effects  of  the  deposit,  therefore,  would  not  be 
so  palpable  as  they  appear  in  this  numerical  form,  but  they 
would  be  equally  certain,  and  would  infallibly  manifest  them 
selves,  first,  perhaps,  at  some  remote  point,  and  afterward  at 
or  near  the  outlets  of  the  rivers  which  produced  them. 

Obstruction  of  River  Mouths. 

The  mouths  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  streams  known  to 
ancient  internal  navigation  are  already  blocked  up  by  sand 
bars  or  fluviatile  deposits,  and  the  maritime  approaches  to 
river  harbors  frequented  by  the  ships  of  Phenicia  and  Car 
thage  and  Greece  and  Eome  are  shoaled  to  a  considerable 

*  See  the  careful  estimates  of  ROSET,  Moyens  de  forcer  les  Torrents,  etc., 
pp.  42,  44. 


RIVER   DEPOSITS.  431 

distance  out  to  sea.  The  inclination  of  almost  every  known 
river  bed  has  been  considerably  reduced  within  the  historical 
period,  and  nothing  but  great  volume  of  water,  or  exceptional 
rapidity  of  flow,  now  enables  a  few  large  streams  like  the 
Amazon,  the  La  Plata,  the  Ganges,  and,  in  a  less  degree,  the 
Mississippi,  to  carry  their  own  deposits  far  enough  out  into 
deep  water  to  prevent  the  formation  of  serious  obstructions  to 
navigation.  But  the  degradation  of  their  banks,  and  the 
transportation  of  earthy  matter  to  the  sea  by  their  currents, 
are  gradually  filling  up  the  estuaries  even  of  these  mighty 
floods,  and  unless  the  threatened  evil  shall  be  averted  by  the 
action  of  geological  forces,  or  by  artificial  contrivances  more 
efficient  than  dredging  machines,  the  destruction  of  every  har 
bor  in  the  world  which  receives  a  considerable  river  must 
inevitably  take  place  at  no  very  distant  date. 

This  result  would,  perhaps,  have  followed  in  some  incal 
culably  distant  future,  if  man  had  not  come  to  inhabit  the 
earth  as  soon  as  the  natural  forces  which  had  formed  its  sur 
face  had  arrived  at  such  an  approximate  equilibrium  that  his 
existence  on  the  globe  was  possible ;  but  the  general  effect  of 
his  industrial  operations  has  been  to  accelerate  it  immensely. 
Rivers,  in  countries  planted  by  nature  with  forests  and  never 
inhabited  by  man,  employ  the  little  earth  and  gravel  they 
transport  chiefly  to  raise  their  own  beds  and  to  form  plains  in 
their  basins.*  In  their  upper  course,  where  the  current  is 
swiftest,  they  are  most  heavily  charged  with  coarse  rolled  or 
suspended  matter,  and  this,  in  floods,  they  deposit  on  their 
shores  in  the  mountain  valleys  where  they  rise ;  in  their  mid 
dle  course,  a  lighter  earth  is  spread  over  the  bottom  of  their 

*  Rivers  which  transport  sand,  gravel,  pebbles,  heavy  mineral  matter 
in  short,  tend  to  raise  their  own  beds  ;  those  charged  only  with  fine,  light 
earth,  to  cut  them  deeper.  The  prairie  rivers  of  the  West  have  deep 
channels,  because  the  mineral  matter  they  carry  down  is  not  heavy  enough 
to  resist  the  impulse  of  even  a  moderate  current,  and  those  tributaries  of 
the  Po  which  deposit  their  sediment  in  the  lakes — the  Ticino,  the  Adda, 
the  Oglio,  and  the  Mincio — flow,  in  deep  cuts,  for  the  same  reason. — BAUM- 

GAETEN,  1.  C.,  p.  132. 


432  SAND   BANKS SEDIMENT    OF   THE   NILE. 

widening  basins,  and  forms  plains  of  moderate  extent ;  the  fine 
silt  which  floats  farther  is  deposited  over  a  still  broader  area, 
or,  if  carried  out  to  sea,  is,  in  great  part  quickly  swept  far  off 
by  marine  currents  and  dropped  at  last  in  deep  water.  Man's 
"  improvement  "  of  the  soil  increases  the  erosion  from  its  sur 
face  ;  his  arrangements  for  confining  the  lateral  spread  of  the 
water  in  floods  compel  the  rivers  to  transport  to  their  mouths 
the  earth  derived  from  that  erosion  even  in  their  upper  course ; 
and,  consequently,  the  sediment  they  deposit  at  their  outlets  is 
not  only  much  larger  in  quantity,  but  composed  of  heavier 
materials,  which  sink  more  readily  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea 
and  are  less  easily  removed  by  marine  currents. 

The  tidal  movement  of  the  ocean,  deep  sea  currents,  and 
the  agitation  of  inland  waters  by  the  wind,  lift  up  the  sands 
strewn  over  the  bottom  by  diluvial  streams  or  sent  down  by 
mountain  torrents,  and  throw  them  up  on  dry  land,  or  deposit 
them  in  sheltered  bays  and  nooks  of  the  coast — for  the  flowing 
is  stronger  than  the  ebbing  tide,  the  affluent  than  the  refluent 
wave.  This  cause  of  injury  to  harbors  it  is  not  in  man's 
power  to  resist  by  any  means  at  present  available  ;  but,  as  we 
have  seen,  something  can  be  done  to  prevent  the  degradation 
of  high  grounds,  and  to  diminish  the  quantity  of  earth  which 
is  annually  abstracted  from  the  mountains,  from  table  lands, 
and  from  river  banks,  to  raise  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 

This  latter  cause  of  harbor  obstruction,  though  an  active 
agent,  is,  nevertheless,  in  many  cases,  the  less  powerful  of  the 
two.  The  earth  suspended  in  the  lower  course  of  fluviatile 
currents  is  lighter  than  sea  sand,  river  water  lighter  than  sea 
water,  and  hence,  if  a  land  stream  enters  the  sea  with  a  con 
siderable  volume,  its  water  flows  over  that  of  the  sea,  and 
bears  its  slime  with  it  until  it  lets  it  fall  far  from  shore,  or,  as 
is  more  frequently  the  case,  mingles  with  some  marine  current 
and  transports  its  sediment  to  a  remote  point  of  deposit.  The 
earth  borne  out  of  the  mouths  of  the  Kile  is  in  part  carried 
over  the  waves  which  throw  up  sea  sand  on  the  beach,  and 
deposited  in  deep  water,  in  part  drifted  by  the  current,  which 
sweeps  east  and  north  along  the  coasts  of  Egypt  and  Syria, 


SEDIMENT   OF   THE   NILE.  433 

until  it  finds  a  resting  place  in  the  northeastern  angle  of  the 
Mediterranean.*  Thus  the  earth  loosened  by  the  rude  Abys 
sinian  ploughshare,  and  washed  down  by  the  rain  from  the 
hills  of  Ethiopia  which  man  has  stripped  of  their  protecting 
forests,  contributes  to  raise  the  plains  of  Egypt,  to  shoal  the 
maritime  channels  which  lead  to  the  city  built  by  Alexander 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Nile,  and  to  fill  up  the  harbors  made 
famous  by  Phenician  commerce. 

*  "  The  stream  carries  this  mud,  &c.,  at  first  farther  to  the  east,  and 
only  lets  it  fall  where  the  force  of  the  current  becomes  weakened.  This 
explains  the  continual  advance  of  the  land  seaward  along  the  Syrian  coast, 
in  consequence  of  which  Tyre  and  Sidon  no  longer  lie  on  the  shore,  hut 
some  distance  inland.  That  the  Nile  contributes  to  this  deposit  may  easily 
be  seen,  even  by  the  unscientific  observer,  from  the  stained  and  turbid 
character  of  the  water  for  many  miles  from  its  mouths.  A  somewhat 
alarming  phenomenon  was  observed  in  this  neighborhood  in  1801,  on  board 
the  English  frigate  Komulus,  Captain  Culverhouse,  on  a  voyage  from  Acre 
to  Abukir.  Dr.  E.  D.  Clarke,  who  was  a  passenger  on  board  this  ship, 
thus  describes  it : 

"  '  26th  July. — To-day,  Sunday,  we  accompanied  the  captain  to  the 
wardroom  to  dine,  as  usual,  with  Ms  officers.  While  we  were  at  table, 
we  heard  the  sailors  who  were  throwing  the  lead  suddenly  cry  out: 
*'  Three  and  a  half!  "  The  captain  sprang  up,  was  on  deck  in  an  instant, 
and,  almost  at  the  same  moment,  the  ship  slackened  her  way,  and  veered 
about.  Every  sailor  on  board  supposed  she  would  ground  at  once.  Mean 
while,  however,  as  the  ship  came  round,  the  whole  surface  of  the  water 
was  seen  to  be  covered  with  thick,  black  mud,  which  extended  so  far  that 
it  appeared  like  an  island.  At  the  same  time,  actual  land  was  nowhere  to 
be  seen — not  even  from  the  masthead — nor  was  any  notice  of  such  a  shoal 
to  be  found  on  any  chart  on  board.  The  fact  is,  as  we  learned  afterward, 
that  a  stratum  of  mud,  stretching  from  the  mouths  of  the  Nile  for  many 
miles  out  into  the  open  sea,  forms  a  movable  deposit  along  the  Egyptian 
coast.  If  this  deposit  is  driven  forward  by  powerful  currents,  it  some 
times  rises  to  the  surface,  and  disturbs  the  mariner  by  the  sudden  appear 
ance  of  shoals  where  the  charts  lead  him  to  expect  a  considerable  depth 
of  water.  But  these  strata  of  mud  are,  in  reality,  not  in  the  least  dangerous. 
As  soon  as  a  ship  strikes  them  they  break  up  at  once,  and  a  frigate  may 
hold  her  course  in  perfect  safety  where  an  inexperienced  pilot,  misled  by 
his  soundings,  would  every  moment  expect  to  be  stranded.'  "  —  BOTTQER, 
Das  Hittclmecr,  pp.  188,  189. 

28 


4:34  SUBTERRANEAN   WATERS. 

Subterranean  Waters. 

I  have  frequently  alluded  to  a  branch  of  geography,  the 
importance  of  which  is  but  recently  adequately  recognized — 
the  subterranean  waters  of  the  earth  considered  as  stationary 
reservoirs,  as  flowing  currents,  and  as  filtrating  fluids.  The 
earth  drinks  in  moisture  by  direct  absorption  from  the  atmos 
phere,  by  the  deposition  of  clew,  by  rain  and  snow,  by  percola 
tion  from  rivers  and  other  superficial  bodies  of  water,  and 
sometimes  by  currents  flowing  into  caves  or  smaller  visible 
apertures.*  Some  of  this  humidity  is  exhaled  again  by  the 

*  The  caves  of  Carniola  receive  considerable  rivers  from  the  surface  of 
the  earth,  which  cannot,  in  all  cases,  he  identified  with  streams  flowing  out 
of  them  at  other  points,  and  like  phenomena  are  not  uncommon  in  other 
limestone  countries. 

The  cases  are  certainly  not  numerous  where  marine  currents  are  known 
to  pour  continuously  into  cavities  beneath  the  surface  of  the  earth,  but 
there  is  at  least  one  well-authenticated  instance  of  this  sort — that  of  the 
mill  streams  at  Argostoli  in  the  island  of  Cephalonia.  It  had  been  long 
observed  that  the  sea  water  flowed  into  several  rifts  and  cavities  ia  the 
limestone  rocks  of  the  coast,  but  the  phenomenon  has  excited  little  atten 
tion  until  very  recently.  In  1833,  three  of  the  entrances  were  closed,  and 
a  regular  channel,  sixteen  feet  long  and  three  feet  wide,  with  a  fall  of  three 
feet,  was  cut  into  the  mouth  of  a  larger  cavity.  The  sea  water  flowed  into 
this  canal,  and  could  be  followed  eighteen  or  twenty  feet  beyond  its  inner 
terminus,  when  it  disappeared  in  holes  and  clefts  in  the  rock. 

In  1858,  the  canal  had  been  enlarged  to  the  width  of  five  feet  and  a 
half,  and  a  depth  of  a  foot.  The  water  pours  rapidly  through  the  canal 
into  an  irregular  depression  and  forms  a  pool,  the  surface  of  which  is  three 
or  four  feet  below  the  adjacent  soil,  and  about  two  and  a  half  or  three  feet 
below  the  level  of  the  sea.  From  this  pool  it  escapes  through  several 
holes  and  clefts  in  the  rock,  and  has  not  yet  been  found  to  emerge  else 
where. 

There  is  a  tide  at  Argostoli  of  about  six  inches  in  still  weather,  but  it  is 
considerably  higher  with  a  south  wind.  I  do  not  find  it  stated  whether 
water  flows  through  the  canal  into  the  cavity  at  low  tide,  but  it  distinctly 
appears  that  there  is  no  refluent  current,  as  of  course  there  could  not  be 
from  a  basin  so  much  below  the  sea.  Mousson  found  the  delivery  through 
the  canal  to  be  at  the  rate  of  24.88  cubic  feet  to  the  second ;  at  what  stage 
of  the  tide  does  not  appear.  Other  mills  of  the  same  sort  have  been 


SUBTERRANEAN   WATEKS.  435 

soil,  some  is  taken  up  by  organic  growths  and  by  inorganic 
compounds,  some  poured  out  upon  the  surface  by  springs  and 
either  immediately  evaporated  or  carried  down  to  larger 
streams  and  to  the  sea,  some  flows  by  subterranean  courses 
into  the  bed  of  fresh-water  rivers  *  or  of  the  ocean,  and  some 
remains,  though  even  here  not  in  forever  motionless  repose,  to 
fill  deep  cavities  and  underground  channels,  f  In  every  case 

erected,  and  there  appear  to  be  several  points  on  the  coast  where  the  sea 
flows  into  the  land. 

Various  hypotheses  have  been  suggested  to  explain  this  phenomenon, 
some  of  which  assume  that  the  water  descends  to  a  great  depth  beneath 
the  crust  of  the  earth,  but  the  supposition  of  a  difference  of  level  in  the 
surface  of  the  sea  on  the  opposite  sides  of  the  island,  which  seems  con 
firmed  by  other  circumstances,  is  the  most  obvious  method  of  explaining 
these  singular  facts.  If  we  suppose  the  level  of  the  water  on  one  side  of 
the  island  to  be  raised  by  the  action  of  currents  three  or  four  feet  higher 
than  on  the  other,  the  existence  of  cavities  and  channels  in  the  rock  would 
easily  account  for  a  subterranean  current  beneath  the  island,  and  the  aper 
tures  of  escape  might  be  so  deep  or  so  small  as  to  elude  observation.  See 
Aits  dcr  Natur,  vol.  19,  pp.  129,  et  scqq.  See  Appendix,  No.  51. 

.  *  "The  affluents  received  by  the  Seine  below  Kouen  are  so  inconsider 
able,  that  the  augmentation  of  the  volume  of  that  river  must  be  ascribed 
principally  to  springs  rising  in  its  bed.  This  is  a  point  of  which  engineers 
now  take  notice,  and  M.  Belgrand,  the  able  officer  charged  with  the  im 
provement  of  the  navigation  of  the  Seine  between  Paris  and  Rouen,  has 
devoted  much  attention  to  it."— BABINET,  Etudes  et  Lectures,  iii,  p.  185. 

On  page  232  of  the  volume  just  quoted,  the  same  author  observes  :  "In 
the  lower  part  of  its  course,  from  the  falls  of  the  Oise,  the  Seine  receives 
so  few  important  affluents,  that  evaporation  alone  would  suffice  to  exhaust 
all  the  water  which  passes  under  the  bridges  of  Paris.1" 

This  supposes  a  much  greater  amount  of  evaporation  than  has  been 
usually  computed,  but  I  believe  it  is  well  settled  that  the  Seine  conveys  to 
the  sea  much  more  water  than  is  discharged  into  it  by  all  its  superficial 
branches. 

t  Girard  and  Duchatelet  maintain  that  the  subterranean  waters  of 
Paris  are  absolutely  stagnant.  See  their  report  on  drainage  by  artesian 
wells,  Annales  des  Fonts  et  Chaussees,  1833,  2me  semestre,  pp.  313,  et  seqq. 

This  opinion,  if  locally  true,  cannot  be  generally  so,  for  it  is  inconsistent 
with  the  well-known  fact  that  the  very  first  eruption  of  water  from  a  boring 
often  brings  up  leaves  and  other  objects  which  must  have  been  carried  into 
the  underground  reservoirs  by  currents. 


4:36  6UBTERKANEAN    WATEES. 

the  aqueous  vapors  of  the  air  are  the  ultimate  source  of  supply, 
and  all  these  hidden  stores  are  again  returned  to  the  atmos 
phere  by  evaporation. 

The  proportion  of  the  water  of  precipitation  taken  up  by 
direct  evaporation  from  the  surface  of  the  ground  seems  to 
have  been  generally  exaggerated,  sufficient  allowance  not 
being  made  for  moisture  carried  downward,  or  in  a  lateral 
direction,  by  infiltration  or  by  crevices  in  the  superior  rocky 
or  earthy  strata.  According  to  Wittwer,  Mariotte  found  that 
but  one  sixth  of  the  precipitation  in  the  basin  of  the  Seine  was 
delivered  into  the  sea  by  that  river,  "  so  that  five  sixths 
remained  for  evaporation  and  consumption  by  the  organic 
world."  * 

Lieutenant  Maury — -whose  scientific  reputation,  though 
fallen,  has  not  quite  sunk  to  the  level  of  his  patriotism — esti 
mates  the  annual  amount  of  precipitation  in  the  valley  of  the 
Mississippi  at  620  cubic  miles,  the  discharge  of  that  river  into 
the  sea  at  107  cubic  miles,  and  concludes  that  "  this  would 
leave  513  cubic  miles  of  water  to  be  evaporated  from  this 
river  basin  annually."  f  In  these  and  other  like  computations, 
the  water  carried  down  into  the  earth  by  capillary  and  larger 
conduits  is  wholly  lost  sight  of,  and  no  thought  is  bestowed 
upon  the  supply  for  springs,  for  common  and  artesian  wells, 
and  for  underground  rivers,  like  those  in  the  great  caves  of 
Kentucky,  which  may  gush  up  in  fresh-water  currents  at  the 
bottom  of  the  Caribbean  Sea,  or  rise  to  the  light  of  day  in  the 
far-off  peninsula  of  Florida. 

The  progress  of  the  emphatically  modern  science  of  geology 
has  corrected  these  erroneous  views,  because  the  observations 
on  which  it  depends  have  demonstrated  not  only  the  existence, 
but  the  movement,  of  water  in  nearly  all  geological  forma 
tions,  have  collected  evidence  of  the  presence  of  large  reser 
voirs  at  greater  or  less  depths  beneath  surfaces  of  almost  every 

*  Physikalische  Geographic,  p.  286.  It  does  not  appear  whether  this 
inference  is  Mariotte's  or  "Wittwer's.  I  suppose  it  is  a  conclusion  of  the 
latter. 

t  Physical  Geography  of  the  Sea.    Tenth  edition.    London,  1861,  §  274. 


ABSORPTION   BY   THE   EARTH.  437 

character,  and  have  investigated  the  rationale  of  the  attendant 
phenomena.  The  distribution  of  these  waters  has  been  mi 
nutely  studied  with  reference  to  a  great  number  of  localities, 
and  though  the  actual  mode  of  their  vertical  and  horizontal 
transmission  is  still  involved  in  much  doubt,  the  laws  which 
determine  their  aggregation  are  so  well  understood,  that,  when 
the  geology  of  a  given  district  is  known,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
determine  at  what  depth  water  will  be  reached  by  the  borer, 
and  to  what  height  it  will  rise. 

The  same  principles  have  been  successfully  applied  to  the 
discovery  of  small  subterranean  collections  or  currents  of  water, 
and  some  persons  have  acquired,  by  a  moderate  knowledge  of 
the  superficial  structure  of  the  earth  combined  with  long  prac 
tice,  a  skill  in  the  selection  of  favorable  places  for  digging 
wells  which  seems  to  common  observers  little  less  than  mirac 
ulous.  The  Abbe  Paramelle — a  French  ecclesiastic  who  de 
voted  himself  for  some  years  to  this  subject  and  was  extensively 
employed  as  a  well-finder — states,  in  his  work  on  Fountains, 
that  in  the  course  of  thirty-four  years  he  had  pointed  out  more 
than  ten  thousand  subterranean  springs,  and  though  his  geo 
logical  speculations  were  often  erroneous,  the  highest  scientific 
authorities  in  Europe  have  testified  to  the  great  practical  value 
of  his  methods,  and  the  almost  infallible  certainty  of  his  pre 
dictions.* 

Babinet  quotes  a  French  proverb,  "  Summer  rain  wets 
nothing,"  and  explains  it  as  meaning  that  the  water  of  such 
rains  is  "  almost  totally  taken  up  by  evaporation."  "  The 
rains  of  summer,"  he  adds,  "  however  abundant  they  may  be, 
do  not  penetrate  the  soil  to  a  greater  depth  than  15  or  20 
centimetres.  In  summer  the  evaporating  power  of  the  heat  is 
five  or  six  times  as  great  as  in  winter,  and  this  power  is 
exerted  by  an  atmosphere  capable  of  containing  five  times  as 
much  vapor  as  in  winter."  "  A  stratum  of  snow  which  pre 
vents  evaporation  [from  the  soil]  causes  almost  all  the  water 
that  composes  it  to  filter  down  into  the  earth,  and  form  a 

*  PABAMELLE,  Quelleiikunde,  mit  einem  Voricort  von  B.  COTTA,  1856. 


438  ABSORPTION   AND    INFILTRATION. 

reserve  for  springs,  wells,  and  rivers  which  could  not  be  sup 
plied  by  any  amount  of  summer  rain."  "  This  latter — useful, 
indeed  like  dew,  to  vegetation — does  not  penetrate  the  soil 
and  accumulate  a  store  to  feed  springs  and  to  be  brought  up 
by  them  to  the  open  air."  *  This  conclusion,  however  applic 
able  it  may  be  to  the  climate  and  soil  of  France,  is  too  broadly 
stated  to  be  accepted  as  a  general  truth,  and  in  countries 
where  the  precipitation  is  small  in  the  winter  months,  familial- 
observation  shows  that  the  quantity  of  water  yielded  by  deep 
wells  and  natural  springs  depends  not  less  on  the  rains  of  sum 
mer  than  on  those  of  the  rest  of  the  year,  and,  consequently, 
that  much  of  the  precipitation  of  that  season  must  find  its  way 
to  strata  too  deep  to  lose  water  by  evaporation. 

The  supply  of  subterranean  reservoirs  and  currents,  as  well 
as  of  springs,  is  undoubtedly  derived  chiefly  from  infiltration, 
and  hence  it  must  be  affected  by  all  changes  of  the  natural 
surface  that  accelerate  or  retard  the  drainage  of  the  soil,  or 
that  either  promote  or  obstruct  evaporation  from  it.  It  has 
sufficiently  appeared  from  what  has  gone  before,  that  the  spon 
taneous  drainage  of  cleared  ground  is  more  rapid  than  that  of 
the  forest,  and  consequently,  that  the  felling  of  the  woods,  as 
well  as  the  draining  of  swamps,  deprives  the  subterranean 
waters  of  accessions  which  would  otherwise  be  conveyed  to 
them  by  infiltration.  The  same  effect  is  produced  by  artificial 
contrivances  for  drying  the  soil  either  by  open  ditches  or  by 
underground  pipes  or  channels,  and  in  proportion  as  the  sphere 
of  these  operations  is  extended,  the  effect  of  them  cannot  fail 
to  make  itself  more  and  more  sensibly  felt  in  the  diminished 
supply  of  water  furnished  by  wells  and  running  springs. f 

*  Etudes  ct  Lectures,  vi,  p.  118. 

\  "  The  area  of  soil  dried  by  draining  is  constantly  increasing,  and  the 
water  received  by  the  surface  from  atmospheric  precipitation  is  thereby 
partly  conducted  into  new  channels,  and,  in  general,  carried  oft'  more 
rapidly  than  before.  "Will  not  this  fact  exert  an  influence  on  the  condition 
of  many  springs,  whose  basin  of  supply  thus  undergoes  a  partial  or  complete 
transformation  ?  1  am  convinced  that  it  will,  and  it  is  important  to  collect 
data  for  solving  the  question."  BEENHAED  GOTTA,  Preface  to  PAEAMELLE, 
Quellenkunde  (German  translation),  pp.  vii,  viii.  See  Appendix^  No.  52. 


DIFFUSION    OF   WATEK    IN    THE    SOIL.  439 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  loose  soils,  stripped  of  vegeta 
tion  and  broken  up  by  tlie  plough  or  other  processes  of  cul 
tivation,  may,  until  again  carpeted  by  grasses  or  other  plants, 
absorb  more  rain  and  snow  water  than  when  they  were  cov 
ered  by  a  natural  growth  ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  evapora 
tion  from  such  soils  is  augmented  in  a  still  greater  proportion, 
iiain  scarcely  penetrates  beneath  the  sod  of  grass  ground,  but 
runs  off  over  the  surface ;  and  after  the  heaviest  showers  a 
ploughed  field  will  often  be  dried  by  evaporation  before  the 
water  can  be  carried  off  by  infiltration,  while  the  soil  of  a 
neighboring  grove  will  remain  half  saturated  for  weeks  to 
gether.  Sandy  soils  frequently  rest  on  a  tenacious  subsoil,  at 
a  moderate  depth,  as  is  usually  seen  in  the  pine  plains  of  the 
United  States,  where  pools  of  rain  water  collect  in  slight  de 
pressions  on  the  surface  of  earth,  the  upper  stratum  of  which 
is  as  porous  as  a  sponge.  In  the  open  grounds  such  pools  are 
very  soon  dried  up  by  the  'sun  and  wind  ;  in  the  woods  they 
remain  unevaporated  long  enough  for  the  water  to  diffuse  itself 
laterally  until  it  finds,  in  the  subsoil,  crevices  through  which 
it  may  escape,  or  slopes  which  it  may  follow  to  their  outcrop 
or  descend  along  them  to  lower  strata. 

The  readiness  with  which  water  not  obstructed  by  imper 
meable  strata  diffuses  itself  through  the  earth  in  all  directions 
— and,  consequently,  the  importance  of  keeping  up  the  supply 
of  subterranean  reservoirs — find  a  familiar  illustration  in  the 
effect  of  paving  the  ground  about  the  stems  of  vines  and  trees. 
The  surface  earth  around  the  trunk  of  a  tree  may  be  made  per 
fectly  impervious  to  water,  by  flag  stones  and  cement,  for  a 
distance  greater  than  the  spread  of  the  roots  ;  and  yet  the  tree 
will  not  suffer  for  want  of  moisture,  except  in  droughts  severe 
enough  sensibly  to  affect  the  supply  in  deep  wells  and  springs. 
Both  forest  and  fruit  trees  grow  well  in  cities  where  the  streets 
and  courts  are  closely  paved,  and  where  even  the  lateral  access 
of  water  to  the  roots  is  more  or  less  obstructed  by  deep  cellars 
and  foundation  walls.  The  deep-lying  veins  and  sheets  of 
water,  supplied  by  infiltration  from  above,  send  up  moisture 
by  capillary  attraction,  and  the  pavement  prevents  the  soil 


440  DIFFUSION    OF   WATER   IN   THE   SOIL. 

beneath  it  from  losing  its  humidity  by  evaporation.  Hence, 
city-grown  trees  find  moisture  enough  for  their  roots,  and 
though  plagued  with  smoke  and  dust,  often  retain  their  fresh 
ness  while  those  planted  in  the  open  fields,  where  sun  and 
wind  dry  up  the  soil  faster  than  the  subterranean  fountains 
can  water  it,  are  withering  from  drought.  Without  the  help 
of  artificial  conduit  or  of  water  carrier,  the  Thames  and  the 
Seine  refresh  the  ornamental  trees  that  shade  the  thorough 
fares  of  London  and  of  Paris,  and  beneath  the  hot  and  reeking 
mould  of  Egypt,  the  Kile  sends  currents  to  the  extremest  bor 
der  of  its  valley.* 

*  See  the  interesting  observations  of  KKIEGK  on  this  subject,  ScTiriften 
zur  allgemeinen  Erdkunde,  cap.  iii,  §  6,  and  especially  the  passages  in 
HITTER'S  Erdkunde,  vol.  i,  there  referred  to. 

Laurent,  (Memoires  sur  le  Sahara  Oriental,  pp.  8,  9),  in  speaking  of  a 
river  at  El-Faid,  "  which,  like  all  those  of  the  desert,  is,  most  of  the  time, 
without  water,"  observes,  that  many  wells  are  dug  in  the  bed  of  the  river 
in  the  dry  season,  and  that  the  subterranean  current  thus  reached  appears 
to  extend  itself  laterally,  at  about  the  same  level,  at  least  a  kilometre  from 
the  river,  as  water  is  found  by  digging  to  the  depth  of  twelve  or  fifteen 
metres  at  a  village  situated  at  that  distance  from  the  bank. 

The  most  remarkable  case  of  infiltration  known  to  me  by  personal 
observation  is  the  occurrence  of  fresh  water  in  the  beach  sand  on  the 
eastern  side  of  the  Gulf  of  Akaba,  the  eastern  arm  of  the  Red  Sea.  If  you 
dig  a  cavity  in  the  beach  near  the  sea  level,  it  soon  fills  with  water  so  fresh 
as  not  to  be  undrinkable,  though  the  sea  water  two  or  three  yards  from  it 
contains  even  more  than  the  average  quantity  of  salt.  It  cannot  be  main 
tained  that  this  is  sea  water  freshened  by  filtration  through  a  few  feet  or 
inches  of  sand,  for  salt  water  cannot  be  deprived  of  its  salt  by  that  process. 
It  can  only  come  from  the  highlands  of  Arabia,  and  it  would  seem  that 
there  must  exist  some  large  reservoir  in  the  interior  to  furnish  a  supply 
which,  in  spite  of  evaporation,  holds  out  for  months  after  the  last  rains  of 
winter,  and  perhaps  even  through  the  year.  I  observed  the  fact  in  the 
month  of  June. 

The  precipitation  in  the  mountains  that  border  the  Red  Sea  is  not 
known  by  pluviometric  measurement,  but  the  mass  of  debris  brought 
down  the  ravines  by  the  torrents  proves  that  their  volume  must  be  large. 
The  proportion  of  surface  covered  by  sand  and  absorbent  earth,  in  Arabia 
Petra3a  and  the  neighboring  countries,  is  small,  and  the  mountains  drain 
themselves  rapidly  into  the  wadies  or  ravines  where  the  torrents  are 
formed ;  but  the  beds  of  earth  and  disintegrated  rock  at  the  bottom  of  the 


ARTESIAN  \VELLS. 


Artesian  Wells. 

The  existence  of  artesian  wells  depends  ujon  that  of  sub 
terranean  reservoirs  and  rivers,  and  the  supply  yielded  by 
borings  is  regulated  by  the  abundance  of  such  sources.  The 
waters  of  the  earth  are,  in  many  cases,  derived  from  superficial 
currents  which  are  seen  to  pour  into  chasms  opened,  as  it  were, 
expressly  for  their  reception  ;  and  in  others  where  no  apertures 
in  the  crust  of  the  earth  have  been  detected,  their  existence  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  artesian  wells  sometimes  bring  up 
from  great  depths  seeds,  leaves,  and  even  living  fish,  which 
must  have  been  carried  down  through  channels  large  enough 
to  admit  a  considerable  stream.  But  in  general,  the  sheets 
and  currents  of  -water  reached  by  deep  boring  appear  to  be 
primarily  due  to  infiltration  from  highlands  where  the  water  is 
first  collected  in  superficial  or  subterranean  reservoirs.  By 
means  of  channels  conforming  to  the  dip  of  the  strata,  these 
reservoirs  communicate  with  the  lower  basins,  and  exert  upon 
them  a  fluid  pressure  sufficient  to  raise  a  column  to  the  sur 
face,  whenever  an  orifice  is  opened.*  The  water  delivered  by 

valleys  are  of  so  loose  and  porous  texture,  that  a  great  quantity  of  water 
is  absorbed  in  saturating  them  before  a  visible  current  is  formed  on  their 
surface.  In  a  heavy  thunder  storm,  accompanied  by  a  deluging  rain, 
which  I  witnessed  at  Mount  Sinai  in  the  month  of  May,  a  large  stream  of 
water  poured,  in  an  almost  continuous  cascade,  down  the  steep  ravine 
north  of  the  convent,  by  which  travellers  sometimes  descend  from  the 
plateau  between  the  two  peaks,  but  after  reaching  the  foot  of  the  moun 
tain,  it  flowed  but  a  few  yards  before  it  was  swallowed  up  in  the  sands. 

*  It  is  conceivable  that  in  largo  and  shallow  subterranean  basins  the 
superincumbent  earth  may  rest  upon  the  water  and  be  partly  supported  by 
it.  In  such  case  the  weight  of  the  earth  would  be  an  additional,  if  not  the 
sole,  cause  of  the  ascent  of  the  water  through  the  tubes  of  artesian  wells. 
The  elasticity  of  gases  in  the  cavities  may  also  aid  in  forcing  up  water. 

A  French  engineer,  M.  Mullot,  invented  a  simple  method  of  bringing 
to  the  surface  water  from  any  one  of  several  successive  accumulations  at 
different  depths,  or  of  raising  it,  unmixed,  from  two  or  more  of  them  at 
once.  It  consists  in  employing  concentric  tubes,  one  within  the  other, 
leaving  a  space  for  the  rise  of  water  between  them,  and  reaching  each  to 
the  sheet  from  which  it  is  intended  to  draw. 


442  ARTESIAN   WELLS    IN   THE   DESEKT. 

an  artesian  well  is,  therefore,  often  derived  from  distant 
sources,  and  may  be  wholly  unaffected  by  geographical  or 
meteorological  changes  in  its  immediate  neighborhood,  while 
the  same  changes  may  quite  dry  up  common  wells  and  springs 
which  are  fed  only  by  the  local  infiltration  of  their  own  nar 
row  basins. 

In  most  cases,  artesian  wells  have  been  bored  for  purely 
economical  or  industrial  purposes,  such  as  to  obtain  good  water 
for  domestic  use  or  for  driving  light  machinery,  to  reach  saline 
or  other  mineral  springs,  and  recently,  in  America,  to  open 
fountains  of  petroleum  or  rock  oil.  The  geographical  and  geo 
logical  effects  of  such  abstraction  of  fluids  from  the  bowels  of 
the  earth  are  too  remote  and  uncertain  to  be  here  noticed  ;  * 
but  artesian  wells  have  lately  been  employed  in  Algeria  for  a 
purpose  which  has  even  now  a  substantial,  and  may  hereafter 
acquire  a  very  great  geographical  importance.  It  was  ob 
served  by  many  earlier  as  well  as  recent  travellers  in  the  East, 
among  whom  Shaw  deserves  special  mention,  that  the  Libyan 
desert,  bordering  upon  the  cultivated  shores  of  the  Mediter 
ranean,  appeared  in  many  places  to  rest  upon  a  subterranean 
lake  at  an  accessible  distance  below  the  surface.  The  Moors 
are  vaguely  said  to  have  bored  artesian  wells  down  to  this 
reservoir,  to  obtain  water  for  domestic  use  and  irrigation,  but 


*  Many  more  or  less  probable  conjectures  have  been  made  on  this  sub 
ject,  but  thus  far  I  am  not  aware  that  any  of  the  apprehended  results  have 
been  actually  shown  to  have  happened.  In  an  article  in  the  Annales  dcs 
Fonts  et  Chaussees  for  July  and  August,  1839,  p.  131,  it  was  suggested  that 
the  sinking  of  the  piers  of  a  bridge  at  Tours  in  France  was  occasioned  by 
the  abstraction  of  water  from  the  earth  by  artesian  wells,  and  the  conse 
quent  withdrawal  of  the  mechanical  support  it  had  previously  given  to  the 
strata  containing  it.  A  reply  to  this  article  will  be  found  in  YIOLLET, 
Th  eerie  dcs  Puif.s  Artcsiens,  p.  217. 

In  some  instances  the  water  has  rushed  up  with  a  force  which  seemed 
to  threaten  the  inundation  of  the  neighborhood,  and  even  the  washing 
away  of  much  soil ;  but  in  these  cases  the  partial  exhaustion  of  the  supply, 
or  the  relief  of  hydrostatic  or  elastic  pressure,  has  generally  produced  a 
diminution  of  the  flow  in  a  short  time,  and  I  do  not  know  that  any  serious 
evil  has  ever  been  occasioned  in  this  way. 


ARTESIAN    WELLS    IN    THE   DESERT.  443 

I  do  not  find  such  wells  described  by  any  trustworthy  travel 
ler,  and  the  universal  astonishment  and  incredulity  with 
which  the  native  tribes  viewed  the  operations  of  the  French 
engineers  sent  into  the  desert  for  that  purpose,  are  a  sufficient 
proof  that  this  mode  of  reaching  the  subterranean  waters  was 
new  to  them.  They  were,  however,  aware  of  the  existence  of 
water  below  the  sands,  and  were  dexterous  in  digging  wells — 
square  shafts  lined  with  a  framework  of  palm-tree  stems — to 
the  level  of  the  sheet.  The  wells  so  constructed,  though  not 
technically  artesian  wells,  answer  the  same  purpose ;  for  the 
water  rises  to  the  surface  and  flows  over  it  as  from  a  spring.* 

*  See  a  very  interesting  account  of  these  wells,  and  of  the  workmen 
who  clean  them  out  when  obstructed  by  sand  brought  up  with  the  water, 
in  Laurent's  memoir  on  the  artesian  wells  recently  bored  by  the  French 
Government  in  the  Algerian  desert,  Memo  ire  sur  U  Sahara  Oriental,  etc., 
pp.  19,  et  seqq.  Some  of  the  men  remained  under  water  from  two  minutes 
to  two  minutes  and  forty  seconds.  Several  officers  are  quoted  as  having 
observed  immersions  of  three  minutes1  duration,  and  M.  Berbrugger  alleges 
that  he  witnessed  one  of  five  minutes  and  fifty-five  seconds.  The  shortest 
of  these  periods  is  longer  than  the  best  pearl  diver  can  remain  below  the 
surface  of  salt  water.  The  wells  of  the  Sahara  are  from  twenty  to  eighty 
metres  deep. 

It  hns  often  been  asserted  that  the  ancient  Egyptians  were  acquainted 
with  the  art  of  boring  artesian  wells.  Parthey,  describing  the  Little  Oasis, 
mentions  ruins  of  a  Roman  aqueduct,  and  observes  :  "  It  appears  from  the 
recent  researches  of  Aim,  a  French  engineer,  that  these  aqueducts  are  con 
nected  with  old  artesian  wells,  the  restoration  of  which  would  render  it 
practicable  to  extend  cultivation  much  beyond  its  present  limits.  This 
agrees  with  ancient  testimony.  It  is  asserted  that  the  inhabitants  of  the 
oases  sunk  wells  to  the  depth  of  200,  300,  and  even  500  ells,  from  which 
affluent  streams  of  water  poured  out.  See  OLYMPIODOEUS  in  PTiotii  Mbl,, 
cod.  80,  p.  61,  1.  17,  ed.  Bekk."— PAETHEY,  Wandcrungen,  ii,  p.  528. 

In  a  paper  entitled,  Note  relative  d  I* execution  cTwi  Puits  Artesicn  en 
Egypte  sous  la  XVIII  dynastie,  presented  to  the  Academie  des  Inscrip 
tions  et  Belles  Lettres,  on  the  12th  of  November,  1852,  M.  Lenormant  en 
deavors  to  show  that  a  hieroglyphic  inscription  found  at  Contrapscelcis 
proves  the  execution  of  a  work  of  this  sort  in  the  Nubian  desert,  at  the 
period  indicated  in  the  title  to  his  paper.  The  interpretation  of  the  in 
scription  is  a  question  for  Egyptologists ;  but  if  wells  were  actually  bored 
through  the  rock  by  the  Egyptians  after  the  Chinese  or  the  European 
fashion,  it  is  singular  that  among  the  numerous  and  minute  representa- 


444  ARTESIAN   WELLS    IN    THE   DESERT. 

These  wells,  however,  are  too  few  and  too  scanty  in  supply 
to  serve  any  other  purposes  than  the  domestic  wells  of  other 
countries,  and  it  is  but  recently  that  the  transformation  of 
desert  into  cultivable  land  by  this  means  has  been  seriously 
attempted.  The  French  Government  has  bored  a  large  num 
ber  of  artesian  wells  in  the  Algerian  desert  within  a  few  years, 
and  the  native  sheikhs  are  beginning  to  avail  themselves  of 
the  process.  Every  well  becomes  the  nucleus  of  a  settlement 
proportioned  to  the  supply  of  water,  and  before  the  end  of  the 
year  1860,  several  nomade  tribes  had  abandoned  their  wan 
dering  life,  established  themselves  around  the  wells,  and 
planted  more  than  30,000  palm  trees,  besides  other  perennial 
vegetables.*  The  water  is  found  at  a  small  depth,  generally 
from  100  to  200  feet,  and  though  containing  too  large  a  pro- 

tions  of  their  industrial  operations,  painted  or  carved  on  the  Avails  of 
their  tombs,  no  trace  of  the  processes  employed  for  so  remarkable  and  im 
portant  a  purpose  should  have  been  discovered.  See  Appendix,  No.  54. 

It  is  certain  that  artesian  wells  have  been  common  in  China  from  a 
very  remote  antiquity,  and  the  simple  method  used  by  the  Chinese — where 
the  borer  is  raised  and  let  fall  by  a  rope,  instead  of  a  rigid  rod — has  been 
lately  been  employed  in  Europe  with  advantage.  Some  of  the  Chinese 
wells  are  said  to  be  3,000  feet  deep  ;  that  of  Neusalzwerk  in  Silesia — the 
deepest  in  Europe — is  2,300.  A  well  was  bored  at  St.  Louis,  in  Missouri, 
a  few  years  ago,  to  supply  a  sugar  refinery,  to  the  depth  of  2,199  feet. 
This  was  executed  by  a  private  firm  in  three  years,  at  the  expense  of  only 
$10.000.  Another  has  since  been  bored  at  the  State  capitol  at  Columbus, 
Ohio,  2,500  feet  deep,  but  without  obtaining  the  desired  supply  of  water. 

*  "  In  the  anticipation  of  our  success  at  Oum-Thiour,  every  thing  had 
been  prepared  to  take  advantage  of  this  new  source  of  wealth  without  a 
moment's  delay.  A  division  of  the  tribe  of  the  Selmia,  and  their  sheikh, 
Aissa  ben  Shu,  laid  the  foundation  of  a  village  as  soon  as  the  water  flowed, 
and  planted  twelve  hundred  date  palms,  renouncing  their  wandering  life  to 
attach  themselves  to  the  soil.  In  this  arid  spot,  life  had  taken  the  place 
of  solitude,  and  presented  itself,  with  its  smiling  images,  to  the  astonished 
traveller.  Young  girls  were  drawing  water  at  the  fountain ;  the  flocks,  tho 
great  dromedaries  with  their  slow  pace,  the  horses  led  by  the  halter,  were 
moving  to  the  watering  trough  ;  the  hounds  and  the  falcons  enlivened  the 
group  of  party-colored  tents,  and  living  voices  and  animated  movement 
had  succeeded  to  silence  and  desolation." — LAUKENT,  Memoircs  sur  le  Sa 
hara,  p.  85. 


ARTESIAN   WELLS    IN   THE   DESERT.  445 

portion  of  mineral  matter  to  be  acceptable  to  a  European  palate, 
it  answers  well  for  irrigation,  and  does  not  prove  unwholesome 
to  the  natives. 

The  most  obvious  use  of  artesian  wells  in  the  desert  at 
present  is  that  of  creating  stations  for  the  establishment  of  mil 
itary  posts  and  halting  places  for  the  desert  traveller  ;  but  if 
the  supply  of  water  shall  prove  adequate  for  the  indefinite 
extension  of  the  system,  it  is  probably  destined  to  produce  a 
greater  geographical  transformation  than  has  ever  been  effected 
by  any  scheme  of  human  improvement.  The  most  striking 
contrast  of  landscape  scenery  that  nature  brings  near  together 
in  time  or  place,  is  that  between  the  greenery  of  the  tropics, 
or  of  a  northern  summer,  and  the  snowy  pall  of  leafless  winter. 
IS"ext  to  this  in  startling  novelty  of  effect,  we  must  rank  the 
sudden  transition  from  the  shady  and  verdant  oasis  of  the 
desert  to  the  bare  and  burning  party-colored  ocean  of  sand  and 
rock  which  surrounds  it.*  The  most  sanguine  believer  in 

*  The  variety  of  hues  and  tones  in  the  local  color  of  the  desert  is,  I 
think,  one  of  the  phenomena  which  most  surprise  and  interest  a  stranger 
to  those  regions.  In  England  and  the  United  States,  rock  is  so  generally 
covered  with  moss  or  earth,  and  earth  with  vegetation,  that  untravelled 
Englishmen  and  Americans  are  not  very  familiar  with  naked  rock  as  a  con 
spicuous  element  of  landscape.  Hence,  in  their  conception  of  a  bare  cliff 
or  precipice,  they  hardly  ascribe  definite  co.or  to  it,  but  depict  it  to  their 
imagination  as  wearing  a  neutral  tint  not  assimilable  to  any  of  the  hues 
with  which  nature  tinges  her  atmospheric  or  paints  her  organic  creations. 
There  are  certainly  extensive  desert  ranges,  chiefly  limestone  formations, 
where  the  surface  is  either  white,  or  has  weathered  down  to  a  dull  uni 
formity  of  tone  which  can  hardly  be  called  color  at  all ;  and  there  are 
sand  plains  and  drifting  hills  of  wearisome  monotony  of  tint.  But  the 
chemistry  of  the  air,  though  it  may  tame  the  glitter  of  the  limestone  to  a 
dusky  gray,  brings  out  the  green  and  brown  and  purple  of  the  igneous 
rocks,  and  the  white  and  red  and  blue  and  violet  and  yellow  of  the  sand 
stone.  Many  a  cliff  in  Arabia  Petrsoa  is  as  manifold  in  color  as  the  rain- 
how,  and  the  veins  are  so  variable  in  thickness  and  inclination,  so  contorted 
and  involved  in  arrangement,  as  to  bewilder  the  eye  of  the  spectator  like  a 
disk  of  party-colored  glass  in  rapid  revolution. 

In  the  narrower  wadies,  the  mirage  is  not  common  ;  but  on  broad  ex 
panses,  as  at  many  points  between  Cairo  and  Suez,  and  in  Wadi  el  Araba, 
it  mocks  you  with  lakes  and  land-locked  bays,  studded  with  islands  and 


ARTIFICIAL   SPRINGS. 

indefinite  human  progress  hardly  expects  that  man's  cunning 
will  accomplish  the  universal  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy,  "  the 
desert  shall  blossom  as  the  rose,"  in  its  literal  sense ;  but  sober 
geographers  have  thought  the  future  conversion  of  the  sand 
plains  of  Northern  Africa  into  fruitful  gardens,  by  means  of 
artesian  wells,  not  an  improbable  expectation.  They  have 
gone  farther,  and  argued  that,  if  the  soil  were  covered  witl 
fields  and  forests,  vegetation  would  call  down  moisture  from 
the  Libyan  sky,  and  that  the  showers  which  are  now  wasted 
on  the  sea,  or  so  often  deluge  Southern  Europe  with  destruc 
tive  inundation,  would  in  part  be  condensed  over  the  arid 
wastes  of  Africa,  and  thus,  without  further  aid  from  man, 
bestow  abundance  on  regions  which  nature  seems  to  have  con 
demned  to  perpetual  desolation. 

An  equally  bold  speculation,  founded  on  the  well-known 
fact,  that  the  temperature  of  the  earth  and  of  its  internal  waters 
increases  as  we  descend  beneath  the  surface,  has  suggested  that 
artesian  wells  might  supply  heat  for  industrial  and  domestic 
purposes,  for  hot-house  cultivation,  and  even  for  the  local 
amelioration  of  climate.  The  success  with  which  Count  Lar- 
darello  has  employed  natural  hot  springs  for  the  evaporation 
of  water  charged  with  boracic  acid,  and  other  fortunate  appli 
cations  of  the  heat  of  thermal  sources,  lend  some  countenance 
to  the  latter  project ;  but  both  must,  for  the  present,  be  ranked 
among  the  vague  possibilities  of  science,  not  regarded  as  prob 
able  future  triumphs  of  man  over  nature. 

Artificial  Springs. 

A  more  plausible  and  inviting  scheme  is  that  of  the  crea 
tion  of  perennial  springs  by  husbanding  rain  and  snow  water, 

fringed  with  trees,  all  painted  with  an  illusory  truth  of  representation 
absolutely  indistinguishable  from  the  reality.  The  checkered  earth,  too,  is 
canopied  with  a  heaven  as  variegated  as  itself.  You  see,  high  up  in  the 
sky,  rosy  clouds  at  noonday,  colored  probably  by  reflection  from  the  ruddy 
mountains,  while  near  the  horizon  float  cumuli  of  a  transparent  ethereal 
blue,  seemingly  balled  up  out  of  the  clear  cerulean  substance  of  the  firma 
ment,  and  detached  from  the  heavenly  vault,  not  by  color  or  consistence, 
but  solely  by  the  light  and  shade  of  their  prominences. 


PALISSY'S  THEORY  OF  SPRINGS.  447 

storing  it  up  in  artificial  reservoirs  of  earth,  and  filtering  it 
through  purifying  strata,  in  analogy  with  the  operations  of 
nature.  The  sagacious  Palissy — starting  from  the  theory  that 
all  springs  are  primarily  derived  from  precipitation,  and  rea 
soning  justly  on  the  accumulation  and  movement  of  water  in 
the  earth — proposed  to  reduce  theory  to  practice,  and  to  im 
itate  the  natural  processes  by  which  rain  is  absorbed  by  the 
earth  and  given  out  again  in  running  fountains.  "  When  I 
had  long  and  diligently  considered  the  cause  of  the  springing 
of  natural  fountains  and  the  places  where  they  be  wont  to 
issue,"  says  he,  "  I  did  plainly  perceive,  at  last,  that  they  do 
proceed  and  are  engendered  of  nought  but  the  rains.  And  it 
is  this,  look  you,  which  hath  moved  me  to  enterprise  the  gath 
ering  together  of  rain  water  after  the  manner  of  nature,  and 
the  most  closely  according  to  her  fashion  that  I  am  able  ;  and 
I  am  well  assured  that  by  following  the  formulary  of  the 
Supreme  Contriver  of  fountains,  I  can  make  springs,  the  water 
whereof  shall  be  as  good  and  pure  and  clear  as  of  such  which 
be  natural."  *  Palissy  discusses  the  subject  of  the  origin 
of  springs  at  length  and  with  much  ability,  dwelling  specially 
on  infiltration,  and,  among  other  things,  thus  explains  the  fre 
quency  of  springs  in  mountainous  regions  :  "  Having  well 
considered  the  which,  thou  mayest  plainly  see  the  reason  why 
there  be  more  springs  and  rivulets  proceeding  from  the  moun 
tains  than  from  the  rest  of  the  earth ;  which  is  for  no  other 
cause  but  that  the  rocks  and  mountains  do  retain  the  water  of 
the  rains  like  vessels  of  brass.  And  the  said  waters  falling 
upon  the  said  mountains  descend  continually  through  the  earth, 
and  through  crevices,  and  stop  not  till  they  find  some  place 
that  is  bottomed  with  stone  or  close  and  thick  rocks  ;  and  they 
rest  upon  such  bottom  until  they  find  some  channel  or  other 
manner  of  issue,  and  then  they  flow  out  in  springs  or  brooks 
or  rivers,  according  to  the  greatness  of  the  reservoirs  and  of 
the  outlets  thereof."  f 

After  a  full  exposition  of  his  theory,  Palissy  proceeds  to 

*  (Euvres  de  Palissy,  Des  Eaux  et  Fontaines,  p.  157. 
t  Id.,  p.  166.     See  Appendix,  No.  55. 


448  ARTIFICIAL    SPRINGS. 

describe  liis  method  of  creating  springs,  which  is  substantially 
the  same  as  that  lately  proposed  by  Babinet  in  the  following 
terms  :  "  Choose  a  piece  of  ground  containing  four  or  five 
acres,  with  a  sandy  soil,  and  with  a  gentle  slope  to  determine 
the  now  of  the  water.  Along  its  upper  line,  dig  a  trench  five 
or  six  feet  deep  and  six  feet  wide.  Level  the  bottom  of  the 
trench,  and  make  it  impermeable  by  paving,  by  macadamizing, 
by  bitumen,  or,  more  simply  and  cheaply,  by  a  layer  of  clay. 
By  the  side  of  this  trench  dig  another,  and  throw  the  earth 
from  it  into  the  first,  and  so  on  until  you  have  rendered  the 
subsoil  of  the  whole  parcel  impermeable  to  rain  water.  Build 
a  wall  along  the  lower  line  with  an  aperture  in  the  middle  for 
the  water,  and  plant  fruit  or  other  low  trees  upon  the  whole, 
to  shade  the  ground  and  check  the  currents  of  air  which  pro 
mote  evaporation.  This  will  infallibly  give  you  a  good  spring 
which  will  flow  without  intermission  and  supply  the  wants  of 
a  whole  hamlet  or  a  large  chateau."  *  Babinet  states  that  the 
whole  amount  of  precipitation  on  a  reservoir  of  the  proposed 
area,  in  the  climate  of  Paris,  would  be  about  13,000  cubic 
yards,  not  above  one  half  of  which,  he  thinks,  would  be  lost, 
and,  of  course,  the  other  half  would  remain  available  to  supply 
the  spring.  I  much  doubt  whether  this  expectation  would  be 
realized  in  practice,  in  its  whole  extent ;  for  if  Babinet  is  right 
in  supposing  that  the  summer  rain  is  wholly  evaporated,  the 
winter  rains,  being  much  less  in  quantity,  would  hardly  suffice 
to  keep  the  earth  saturated  and  give  off  so  large  a  surplus. 

The  method  of  Palissy,  though,  as  I  have  said,  similar  in 
principle  to  that  of  Babinet,  would  be  cheaper  of  execution, 

*  BABINET,  Etudes  et  Lectures  8ur  les  Sciences  d1  Observation,  ii,  p.  225. 
Our  author  precedes  his  account  of  his  method  with  a  complaint  which 
most  men  who  indulge  in  thinking  have  occasion  to  repeat  many  times  in 
the  course  of  their  lives.  "  I  will  explain  to  my  readers  the  construction 
of  artificial  fountains  according  to  the  plan  of  the  famous  Bernard  de  Pa 
lissy,  who,  a  hundred  and  fifty  [three  hundred]  years  ago,  came  and  took 
away  from  me,  a  humble  academician  of  the  nineteenth  century,  this  dis 
covery  which  I  had  taken  a  great  deal  of  pains  to  make.  It  is  enough  to 
discourage  all  invention  when  one  finds  plagiarists  in  the  past  as  well  as  in 
the  future !  "  (P.  224.) 


ECONOMIZING   PRECIPITATION.  449 

and,  at  the  same  time,  more  efficient.  He  proposes  the  con 
struction  of  relatively  small  filtering  receptacles,  into  which  he 
would  conduct  the  rain  falling  upon  a  large  area  of  rocky 
hillside,  or  other  sloping  ground  not  readily  absorbing  water. 
This  process  would,  in  all  probability,  be  a  very  successful,  as 
well  as  an  inexpensive,  mode  of  economizing  atmospheric  pre 
cipitation,  and  compelling  the  rain  and  snow  to  form  perennial 
fountains  at  will. 

Economizing  Precipitation. 

The  methods  suggested  by  Pali  say  and  by  Babinet  are  of 
limited  application,  and  designed  only  to  supply  a  sufficient 
quantity  of  water  for  the  domestic  use  of  small  villages  or  large 
private  establishments.  Dumas  has  proposed  a  much  more 
extensive  system  for  collecting  and  retaining  the  wdiole  precip 
itation  in  considerable  valleys,  and  storing  it  in  reservoirs, 
whence  it  is  to  be  drawn  for  household  and  mechanical  pur 
poses,  for  irrigation,  and,  in  short,  for  all  the  uses  to  which  the 
water  of  natural  springs  and  brooks  is  applicable.  His  plan 
consists  in  draining  both  surface  and  subsoil,  by  means  of  con 
duits  differing  in  construction  according  to  local  circumstances, 
but  in  the  main  not  unlike  those  employed  in  improved  agri 
culture,  collecting  the  water  in  a  central  channel,  securing  its 
proper  filterage,  checking  its  too  rapid  flow  by  barriers  at  con- 
venient  points,  and  finally  receiving  the  whole  in  spacious 
covered  reservoirs,  from  which  it  may  be  discharged  in  a  con 
stant  flow  or  at  intervals  as  convenience  may  dictate.* 

There  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  a  very  wride  employment 
of  these  various  contrivances  for  economizing  and  supplying 
water  is  practicable,  and  the  expediency  of  resorting  to  them 
is  almost  purely  an  economical  question.  There  appears  to  be 
no  serious  reason  to  apprehend  collateral  evils  from  them,  and 
in  fact  all  of  them,  except  artesian  wells,  are  simply  indirect 
methods  of  returning  to  the  original  arrangements  of  nature, 
or,  in  other  words,  of  restoring  the  fluid  circulation  of  the 

*  M.  G.  DUMAS,  La  Science  des  Fontaines,  1857. 
29 


4:50  ECONOMIZING   PRECIPITATION. 

globe  ;  for  when  the  earth  was  covered  with  the  forest,  peren 
nial  springs  gushed  from  the  foot  of  every  hill,  brooks  flowed 
down  the  bed  of  every  valley.  The  partial  recovery  of  the 
fountains  and  rivulets  which  once  abundantly  watered  the  face 
of  the  agricultural  world  seems  practicable  by  such  means, 
even  without  any  general  replanting  of  the  forests ;  and  the 
cost  of  one  year's  warfare,  if  judiciously  expended  in  a  com 
bination  of  both  methods  of  improvement,  would  secure,  to 
almost  every  country  that  man  has  exhausted,  an  amelioration 
of  climate,  a  renovated  fertility  of  soil,  and  a  general  physical 
improvement,  which  might  almost  be  characterized  as  a  new 
creation. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   SANDS. 

ORIGIN    OF   SAND — SAND   NOW   CARRIED   DOWN    TO   THE   SEA — THE   SANDS   OV 

EGYPT  AND   THE   ADJACENT   DESERT THE  SUEZ  CANAL — THE  SANDS  OF  EGYPT 

— COAST  DUNES  AND  SAND  PLAINS — SAND  BANKS — DUNES  ON  COAST  OF  AMER 
ICA — DUNES  OF  WESTERN  EUROPE — FORMATION  OF  DUNES — CHARACTER  OF 
DUNE  SAND  —  INTERIOR  STRUCTURE  OF  DUNES — FORM  OF  DUNES  —  GEO 
LOGICAL  IMPORTANCE  OF  DUNES — INLAND  DUNES — AGE,  CHARACTER,  AND 
PERMANENCE  OF  DUNES — USE  OF  DUNES  AS  BARRIER  AGAINST  THE  SEA — 

ENCROACHMENTS  OF  THE  SEA THE  LIIMFJORD — ENCROACHMENTS  OF  THE  SEA — 

DRIFTING  OF  DUNE  SANDS — DUNES  OF  GASCONY — DUNES  OF  DENMARK — DUNES 

OF    PRUSSIA ARTIFICIAL  FORMATION  OF  DUNES TREES   SUITABLE  FOR  DUNE 

PLANTATIONS — EXTENT  OF  DUNES  IN  EUROPE — DUNE  VINEYARDS  OF  CAPE 
BRETON — REMOVAL  OF  DUNES — INLAND  SAND  PLAINS THE  LANDES  OF  GAS- 
CONY THE  BELGIAN  CAMPINE — SANDS  AND  STEPPES  OF  EASTERN  EUROPE 

ADVANTAGES  OF  RECLAIMING  DUNES — GOVERNMENT  WORKS  OF  IMPROVEMENT. 

Origin  of  Sand. 

SAND,  which  is  found  in  beds  or  strata  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea  or  in  the  channels  of  rivers,  as  well  as  in  extensive  de 
posits  upon  or  beneath  the  surface  of  the  dry  land,  appears  to 
consist  essentially  of  the  detritus  of  rocks.  It  is  not  always  by 
any  means  clear  through  what  agency  the  solid  rock  has  been 
reduced  to  a  granular  condition  ;  for  there  are  beds  of  quart- 
zose  sand,  where  the  sharp,  angular  shape  of  the  particles  ren 
ders  it  highly  improbable  that  they  have  been  formed  by 
gradual  abrasion  and  attrition,  and  where  the  supposition  of  a 
crushing  mechanical  force  seems  equally  inadmissible.  In 
common  sand,  the  quartz  grains  are  the  most  numerous ;  but 
this  is  not  a  proof  that  the  rocks  from  which  these  particles 


4:52  OEIGIN    OF   SAND. 

were  derived  were  wholly,  or  even  chiefly,  quartzose  in  char 
acter  ;  for,  in  many  composite  rocks,  as,  for  example,  in  the 
granitic  group,  the  mica,  felspar,  and  hornblende  are  more 
easily  decomposed  by  chemical  action,  or  disintegrated,  com 
minuted,  and  reduced  to  an  impalpable  state  by  mechanical 
force,  than  the  quartz.  In  the  destruction  of  such  rocks,  there 
fore,  the  quartz  would  survive  the  other  ingredients,  and 
remain  unmixed,  when  they  had  been  decomposed  and  had 
entered  into  new  chemical  combinations,  or  been  ground  to 
sliine  and  washed  away  by  water  currents. 

The  greater  or  less  specific  gravity  of  the  different  constit 
uents  of  rock  doubtless  aids  in  separating  them  into  distinct 
masses  when  once  disintegrated,  though  there  are  veined  and 
stratified  beds  of  sand  where  the  difference  between  the  upper 
and  lower  layers,  in  this  respect,  is  too  slight  to  be  supposed 
capable  of  effecting  a  complete  separation.*  In  cases  where 
rock  has  been  reduced  to  sandy  fragments  by  heat,  or  by 
obscure  chemical  and  other  molecular  forces,  the  sandbeds 
may  remain  undisturbed,  and  represent,  in  the  series  of  geo 
logical  strata,  the  solid  formations  from  which  they  were 
derived.  The  large  masses  of  sand  not  found  in  place  have 
been  transported  and  accumulated  by  water  or  by  wind,  the 
former  being  generally  considered  the  most  important  of  these 
agencies  ;  for  the  extensive  deposits  of  the  Sahara,  of  the  des 
erts  of  Persia,  and  of  that  of  Gobi,  are  commonly  supposed  to 
have  been  swept  together  or  distributed  by  marine  currents, 
and  to  have  been  elevated  above  the  ocean  by  the  same  means 
as  other  upheaved  strata. 

*  In  the  curiously  variegated  sandstone  of  Arabia  Petrcea — which  ia 
certainly  a  reaggregation  of  loose  sand  derived  from  particles  of  older 
rocks — the  contiguous  veins  frequently  differ  very  widely  in  color,  but  not 
sensibly  in  specific  gravity  or  in  texture  ;  and  the  singular  way  in  which 
they  are  now  alternated,  now  confusedly  intermixed,  must  be  explained 
otherwise  than  by  the  weight  of  the  respective  grains  which  compose 
them.  They  seem,  in  fact,  to  have  been  let  fall  by  water  in  violent  ebul 
lition  or  tumultuous  mechanical  agitation,  or  by  a  succession  of  sudden 
aquatic  or  aerial  currents  flowing  in  different  directions  and  charged  with 
differently  colored  matter. 


ACTION    OF   RIVERS.  4:53 

Meteoric  and  mechanical  influences  are  still  active  in  tlio 
reduction  of  rocks  to  a  fragmentary  state ;  but  the  quantity  of 
sand  now  transported  to  the  sea  seems  to  be  comparatively 
inconsiderable,  because — not  to  speak  of  the  absence  of  diluvial 
action — the  number  of  torrents  emptying  directly  into  the  sea 
is  much  less  than  it  was  at  earlier  periods.  The  formation  of 
alluvial  plains  in  maritime  bays,  by  the  sedimentary  matter 
brought  down  from  the  mountains,  has  lengthened  the  flow  of 
such  streams  and  converted  them  very  generally  into  rivers, 
or  rather  affluents  of  rivers  much  younger  than  themselves. 
The  filling  up  of  the  estuaries  has  so  reduced  the  slope  of  all 
large  and  many  small  rivers,  and,  consequently,  so  checked  the 
current  of  what  the  Germans  call  their  Unterlauf,  or  lower 
course,  that  they  are  much  less  able  to  transport  heavy  ma 
terial  than  at  earlier  epochs.  The  slime  deposited  by  rivers  at 
their  junction  with  the  sea,  is  usually  found  to  be  composed 
of  material  too  finely  ground  and  too  light  to  be  denominated 
sand,  and  it  can  be  abundantly  shown  that  the  sandbanks  at 
the  outlet  of  large  streams  are  of  tidal,  not  of  fluviatile  origin, 
or,  in  lakes  and  tideless  seas,  a  result  of  the  concurrent  action 
of  waves  and  of  wind. 

Large  deposits  of  sand,  therefore,  must  in  general  be  con 
sidered  as  of  ancient,  not  of  recent  formation,  and  many  emi 
nent  geologists  ascribe  them  to  diluvial  action.  Staring  has 
discussed  this  question  very  fully,  with  special  reference  to  the 
sands  of  the  JSTorth  Sea,  the  Zuiderzee,  and  the  bays  and  chan 
nels  of  the  Dutch  coast.*  His  general  conclusion  is,  that  the 

*  De  Bodcm  van  Nederland,  i,  pp.  243,  246-377,  et  seqq.  See  also  the 
arguments  of  Bremonticr  as  to  the  origin  of  the  dune  sands  of  Gascony, 
Annalcs  des  Fonts  et  Chaussees,  1833,  ler  semestre,  pp.  158,  161.  Bre"- 
montier  estimates  the  sand  annually  thrown  up  on  that  coast  at  five  cubic 
toises  and  two  feet  to  the  running  toise  (ubi  supra,  p.  162),  or  rather  more 
than  two  hundred  and  twenty  cubic  feet  to  the  running  foot.  Laval,  upon 
observations  continued  through  seven  years,  found  the  quantity  to  be 
twenty-five  metres  per  running  metre,  which  is  equal  to  two  hundred  and 
sixty-eight  cubic  feet  to  the  running  foot. — Annales  des  Fonts  et  Chaussecs, 
1842,  2me  semestre,  p.  229.  These  computations  make  the  proportion  of 
Band  deposited  on  the  coast  of  Gascony  three  or  four  times  as  great  as  that 


£54:  SAND   CARRIED   DOWN   TO   THE   SEA. 

rivers  of  tlie  Netherlands  "  move  sand  only  "by  a  very  slow  dis- 
placement  of  sandbanks,  and  do  not  carry  it  with  them  as  a 
suspended  or  floating  material."  The  sands  of  the  German 
Ocean  he  holds  to  be  a  product  of  the  "  great  North  German 
drift,"  deposited  where  they  now  lie  before  the  commencement 
of  the  present  geological  period,  and  he  maintains  similar 
opinions  with  regard  to  the  sands  thrown  up  by  the  Mediter 
ranean  at  the  mouths  of  the  Nile  and  on  the  Barbary  coast.* 

Sand  now  carried  to  the  Sea. 

There  are,  however,  cases  where  mountain  streams  still 
bear  to  the  sea  perhaps  relatively  small,  but  certainly  abso 
lutely  large,  amounts  of  disintegrated  rock.f  The  quantity  of 

observed  by  Andresen  on  tlie  shores  of  Jutland.  Laval  estimates  the  total 
quantity  of  sand  annually  thrown  up  on  the  coast  of  Gascony  at  6,000,000 
cubic  metres,  or  more  than  7,800,000  cubic  yards. 

*  De  Bodem  van  Nedcrland,  i,  p.  339. 

t  The  conditions  favorable  to  the  production  of  sand  from  disintegrated 
rock,  by  causes  now  in  action,  are  perhaps  nowhere  more  perfectly  realized 
than  in  the  Sinaitic  Peninsula.  The  mountains  are  steep  and  lofty,  unpro 
tected  by  vegetation  or  even  by  a  coating  of  earth,  and  the  rocks  which 
compose  them  are  in  a  shattered  and  fragmentary  condition.  They  are 
furrowed  by  deep  and  precipitous  ravines,  with  beds  sufficiently  inclined 
for  the  rapid  flow  of  water,  and  generally  without  basins  in  which  the 
larger  blocks  of  stone  rolled  by  the  torrents  can  be  dropped  and  left  in 
repose  ;  there  are  severe  frosts  and  much  snow  on  the  higher  summits  and 
ridges,  and  the  winter  rains  are  abundant  and  heavy.  The  mountains  are 
principally  of  igneous  formation,  but  many  of  the  less  elevated  peaks  are 
capped  with  sandstone,  and  on  the  eastern  slope  of  the  peninsula  you  may 
sometimes  see,  at  a  single  glance,  several  lofty  pyramids  of  granite,  sepa 
rated  by  considerable  intervals,  and  all  surmounted  by  horizontally  strat 
ified  deposits  of  sandstone  often  only  a  few  yards  square,  which  correspond 
to  each  other  in  height,  are  evidently  contemporaneous  in  origin,  and  were 
once  connected  in  continuous  beds.  The  degradation  of  the  rock  on  which 
this  formation  rests  is  constantly  bringing  down  masses  of  it,  and  mingling 
them  with  the  basaltic,  porphyritic,  granitic,  and  calcareous  fragments 
which  the  torrents  carry  down  to  the  valleys,  and,  through  them,  in  a 
state  of  greater  or  less  disintegration,  to  the  sea.  The  quantity  of  sand 
annually  washed  into  the  Red  Sea  by  the  larger  torrents  of  the  Lesser 
Peninsula,  is  probably  at  least  equal  to  that  contributed  to  the  ocean  by 


SAND    IN   THE   MEDITERRANEAN.  455 

sand  and  gravel  carried  into  the  Mediterranean  by  the  torrents 
of  the  Maritime  Alps,  the  Ligurian  Apennines,  the  islands  of 
Corsica,  Sardinia,  and  Sicily,  and  the  mountans  of  Calabria,  is 
apparently  great.  In  mere  mass,  it  is  possible,  if  not  probable, 
that  as  much  rocky  material,  more  or  less  comminuted,  is  con 
tributed  to  the  basin  of  the  Mediterranean  by  Europe,  even 
excluding  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic  and  the  Euxine,  as  is 
washed  up  from  it  upon  the  coasts  of  Africa  and  Syria.  A 
great  part  of  this  material  is  thrown  out  again  by  the  waves 
on  the  European  shores  of  that  sea.  The  harbors  of  Luni,  Al- 
benga,  San  Kemo,  and  Savona  west  of  Genoa,  and  of  Porto 
Fino  011  the  other  side,  are  filling  up,  and  the  coast  near  Car 
rara  and  Massa  is  said  to  have  advanced  upon  the  sea  to  a  dis- 

any  streams  draining  basins  of  no  greater  extent.  Absolutely  considered, 
then,  the  mass  may  be  said  to  be  large,  but  it  is  apparently  very  small  as 
compared  with  the  sand  thrown  up  by  the  German  Ocean  and  the  Atlantic 
on  the  coasts  of  Denmark  and  of  France.  There  are,  indeed,  in  Arabia 
Petnea,  many  torrents  with  very  short  courses,  for  the  sea  waves  in  many 
parts  of  the  peninsular  coast  wash  the  base  of  the  mountains.  In  these 
cases,  the  debris  of  the  rocks  do  not  reach  the  sea  in  a  sufficiently  com 
minuted  condition  to  be  entitled  to  the  appellation  of  sand,  or  even  in  the 
form  of  well-rounded  pebbles.  The  fragments  retain  their  angular  shape, 
and,  at  some  points  on  the  coast,  they  become  cemented  together  by  lime 
or  other  binding  substances  held  in  solution  or  mechanical  suspension  in 
the  sea  water,  and  are  so  rapidly  converted  into  a  singularly  heterogeneous 
conglomerate,  that  one  deposit  seems  to  be  consolidated  into  a  breccia 
before  the  next  winter's  torrents  cover  it  with  another. 

In  the  northern  part  of  the  peninsula  there  are  extensive  deposits  of 
sand  intermingled  with  agate  pebbles  and  petrified  wood,  but  these  are 
evidently  neither  derived  from  the  Sinaitic  group,  nor  products  of  local 
causes  known  to  be  now  in  action. 

I  may  here  notice  the  often  repeated  but  mistaken  assertion,  that  the 
petrified  wood  of  the  "Western  Arabian  desert  consists  wholly  of  the  stems 
of  palms,  or  at  least  of  endogenous  vegetables.  This  is  an  error.  I  have 
myself  picked  up  in  that  desert,  within  the  space  of  a  very  few  square 
yards,  fragments  both  of  fossil  palms,  and  of  at  least  two  petrified  trees 
distinctly  marked  as  of  exogenous  growth  both  by  annular  structure  and 
by  knots.  In  ligneous  character,  one  of  these  almost  precisely  resembles 
the  grain  of  the  extant  beech,  and  this  specimen  was  wormeaten  before  it 
was  converted  into  silex. 


456  SAND   IN    THE   MEDITERRANEAN. 

tance  of  475  feet  in  tliirt y-three  years.*  Besides  this,  we  have  no 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  deep-water  currents  in  the  Medi 
terranean,  extensive  enough  and  strong  enough  to  transport 
quartzose  sand  across  the  sea.  It  may  be  added  that  much  of 
the  rock  from  which  the  torrent  sands  of  Southern  Europe  are 
derived  contains  little  quartz,  and  hence  the  general  character 
of  these  sands  is  such  that  they  must  be  decomposed  or  ground 
down  to  an  impalpable  slime,  long  before  they  could  be  swept 
over  to  the  African  shore. 

The  torrents  of  Europe,  then,  do  not  at  present  furnish  the 
material  which  composes  the  beach  sands  of  Northern  Africa, 
and  it  is  equally  certain  that  those  sands  are  not  brought  dow^n 
by  the  rivers  of  the  latter  continent.  They  belong  to  a  remote 
geological  period,  and  have  been  accumulated  by  causes  which 
we  cannot  at  present  assign.  The  wind  does  not  stir  water  to 
great  depths  with  sufficient  force  to  disturb  the  bottom, f  and 

*  BOTTGER,   Das  Mittclmeer,  p.  128. 

t  The  testimony  of  divers  and  of  other  observers  on  this  point  is  con 
flicting,  as  might  be  expected  from  the  infinite  variety  of  conditions  by 
which  the  movement  of  water  is  affected.  It  is  generally  believed  that 
the  action  of  the  wind  upon  the  water  is  not  perceptible  at  greater  depths 
than  from  fifteen  feet  in  ordinary,  to  eighty  or  ninety  in  extreme  cases ; 
but  these  estimates  are  probably  very  considerably  below  the  truth.  An- 
dresen  quotes  Bremontier  as  stating  that  the  movement  of  the  waves  some 
times  extends  to  the  depth  of  five  hundred  feet,  and  he  adds  that  others 
think  it  may  reach  to  six  or  even  seven  hundred  feet  below  the  surface. — 
ANDKESEN,  Om  Klitformationen,  p.  20. 

Many  physicists  now  suppose  that  the  undulations  of  great  bodies  of 
water  reach  even  deeper.  But  a  movement  of  undulation  is  not  neces 
sarily  a  movement  of  translation,  and  besides,  there  is  very  frequently  an 
undertow,  which  tends  to  carry  suspended  bodies  out  to  sea  as  powerfully 
as  the  superficial  waves  to  throw  them  on  shore.  Sandbanks  sometimes 
recede  from  the  coast,  instead  of  rolling  toward  it.  Reclus  informs  us 
that  the  Mauvaise,  a  sandbank  near  the  Point  de  Grave,  on  the  Atlantic 
coast  of  France,  has  moved  five  miles  to  the  west  in  less  than  a  century. — 
Ecmie  des  Deux  Hondes,  for  December,  1862,  p.  905. 

The  action  of  currents  may,  in  some  cases,  have  been  confounded  with 
that  of  the  waves.  Sea  currents,  strong  enough,  possibly,  to  transport 
sand  for  some  distance,  flow  far  below  the  surface  in  parts  of  the  open 
ocean,  and  in  narrow  straits  they  have  great  force  and  velocity.  The 


DESERT    SANDS.  457 

the  sand  thrown  upon  the  coast  in  question  must  be  derived 
from  a  narrow  belt  of  sea.  It  must  hence,  in  time,  become 
exhausted,  and  the  formation  of  new  sandbanks  and  dunes 
upon  the  southern  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  will  cease  at 
last  for  want  of  material.* 

But  even  in  the  cases  where  the  accumulations  of  sand  in 
extensive  deserts  appear  to  be  of  marine  formation,  or  rather 
aggregation,  and  to  have  been  brought  to  their  present  posi 
tion  by  upheaval,  they  are  not  wholly  composed  of  material 
collected  or  distributed  by  the  currents  of  the  sea  ;  for,  in  all 
such  regions,  they  continue  to  receive  some  small  contributions 
from  the  disintegration  of  the  rocks  which  underlie,  or  crop 
out  through,  the  superficial  deposits.  In  some  instances,  too, 
as  in  Northern  Africa,  additions  are  constantly  made  to  the 
mass  by  the  prevalence  of  sea  winds,  which  transport,  or,  to 

divers  employed  at  Constantinople  in  1853  found  in  the  Bosphorus,  at.  the 
depth  of  twenty-five  fathoms  and  at  a  point  much  exposed  to  the  wash 
from  Galata  and  Pera,  a  number  of  bronze  guns  supposed  to  have  belonged 
to  a  ship  of  war  blown  up  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  before.  These 
guns  were  not  covered  by  sand  or  slime,  though  a  crust  of  earthy  matter, 
an  inch  in  thickness,  adhered  to  their  upper  surfaces,  and  the  bottom  of  the 
strait  appeared  to  be  wholly  free  from  sediment.  The  current  was  so  pow 
erful  at  this  depth  that  the  divers  were  hardly  able  to  stand,  and  a  keg  of 
nails,  purposely  dropped  into  the  water,  in  order  that  its  movements  might 
serve  as  a  guide  in  the  search  for  a  bag  of  coin  accidentally  lost  overboard 
from  a  ship  in  the  harbor,  was  rolled  by  the  stream  several  hundred  yards 
before  it  stopped. 

*  Few  seas  have  thrown  up  so  much  sand  as  the  shallow  German 
Ocean  ;  but  there  is  some  reason  to  think  that  the  amount  of  this  material 
now  cast  upon  its  northern  shores  is  less  than  at  some  former  periods, 
though  no  extensive  series  of  observations  on  this  subject  has  been  re 
corded.  On  the  Spit  of  Agger,  at  the  present  outlet  of  the  Liimfjord, 
Andresen  found  the  quantity  during  ten  years,  on  a  beach  about  five  hun 
dred  and  seventy  feet  broad,  equal  to  an  annual  deposit  of  an  inch  and  a 
half  over  the  whole  surface. — Om  Klitformationen,  p.  56. 

This  gives  seventy-one  and  a  quarter  cubic  feet  to  the  running  foot — a 
quantity  certainly  much  smaller  than  that  cast  up  by  the  same  sea  on  the 
shores  of  the  Dano-German  duchies  and  of  Holland,  and,  as  we  have 
seen,  scarcely  one  fourth  of  that  deposited  by  the  Atlantic  on  the  coast  of 
Gascony.  See  ante.  p.  453,  note. 


458  SANDS  OF  EGY1?T. 

bpeak  more  precisely,  roll  the  finer  beach  sand  to  considerable 
distances  into  the  interior.  But  this  is  a  very  slow  process,  and 
the  exaggerations  of  travellers  have  diffused  a  vast  deal  of 
popular  error  on  the  subject. 

Sands  of  Egypt. 

In  the  narrow  valley  of  the  Nile — which,  above  its  bifur 
cation  near  Cairo,  is,  throughout  Egypt  and  Nubia,  generally 
bounded  by  precipitous  cliffs — wherever  a  ravine  or  other  con 
siderable  depression  occurs  in  the  wall  of  rock,  one  sees  what 
seems  a  stream  of  desert  sand  pouring  down,  and  common 
observers  have  hence  concluded  that  the  whole  valley  is  in 
danger  of  being  buried  under  a  stratum  of  infertile  soil.  The 
ancient  Egyptians  apprehended  this,  and  erected  walls,  often 
of  unburnt  brick,  across  the  outlet  of  gorges  and  lateral  val 
leys,  to  check  the  flow  of  the  sand  streams.  In  later  ages, 
these  walls  have  mostly  fallen  into  decay,  and  no  preventive 
measures  against  such  encroachments  are  now  resorted  to.  But 
the  extent  of  the  mischief  to  the  soil  of  Egypt,  and  the  future 
danger  from  this  source,  have  been  much  overrated.  The  sand 
on  the  borders  of  the  Nile  is  neither  elevated  so  high  by  the 
wind,  nor  transported  by  that  agency  in  so  great  masses,  as  is 
popularly  supposed ;  and  of  that  which  is  actually  lifted  or 
rolled  and  finally  deposited  by  air  currents,  a  considerable 
proportion  is  either  calcareous,  and,  therefore,  readily  decom 
posable,  or  in  the  state  of  a  very  fine  dust,  and  so,  in  neither 
case,  injurious  to  the  soil.  There  are,  indeed,  both  in  Africa  and 
in  Arabia,  considerable  tracts  of  fine  silicious  sand,  which  may 
be  carried  far  by  high  winds,  but  these  are  exceptional  cases, 
and  in  general  the  progress  of  the  desert  sand  is  by  a  rolling 
motion  along  the  surface.*  So  little  is  it  lifted,  and  so  incon- 

*  Sand  heaps,  three  and  even  six  hundred  feet  high,  are  indeed  formed 
by  the  wind,  but  this  is  effected  by  driving  the  particles  up  an  inclined 
plane,  not  by  lifting  them.  Bremontier,  speaking  of  the  sand  hills  on  the 
western  coast  of  France,  says:  "The  particles  of  sand  composing  them 
are  not  large  enough  to  resist  wind  of  a  certain  force,  nor  small  enough  to 


SANDS   OF  EGYPT.  459 

siderable  is  the  quantity  yet  remaining  on  the  borders  of 
Egypt,  that  a  wall  four  or  five  feet  high  suffices  for  centuries 
to  check  its  encroachments.  This  is  obvious  to  the  eye  of 
every  observer  who  prefers  the  true  to  the  marvellous ;  but 
the  old-world  fable  of  the  overwhelming  of  caravans  by  the 
fearful  simoom — which  even  the  Arabs  no  longer  repeat,  if 
indeed  they  are  the  authors  of  it — is  so  thoroughly  rooted  in 
the  imagination  of  Christendom  that  most  desert  travellers,  of 
the  tourist  class,  think  they  shall  disappoint  the  readers  of 
their  journals  if  they  do  not  recount  the  particulars  of  their 
escape  from  being  buried  alive  by  a  sand  storm,  and  the  pop 
ular  demand  for  a  "  sensation  "  must  be  gratified  accordingly.* 

be  taken  up  by  it,  like  dust ;  they  only  roll  along  the  surface  from  which 
they  are  detached,  and,  though  moving  with  great  velocity,  they  rarely 
rise  to  a  greater  height  than  three  or  four  inches." — Memoire  sur  les  Dunes, 
Ann-ales  des  Fonts  et  Chamsees,  1833,  ler  semestre,  p.  148. 

Andresen  says  that  a  wind,  having  a  velocity  of  forty  feet  per  second, 
is  strong  enough  to  raise  particles  of  sand  as  high  as  the  face  and  eyes  of  a 
man,  but  that,  in  general,  it  rolls  along  the  ground,  and  is  scarcely  ever 
thrown  more  than  to  the  height  of  a  couple  of  yards  from  the  surface. 
Even  in  these  cases,  it  is  carried  forward  by  a  hopping,  not  a  continuous, 
motion  ;  for  a  very  narrow  sheet  or  channel  of  water  stops  the  drift  en 
tirely,  all  the  sand  dropping  into  it  until  it  is  filled  up. 

The  character  of  the  motion  of  sand  drifts  is  well  illustrated  by  an  in 
teresting  fact  not  much  noticed  hitherto  by  travellers  in  the  East.  In 
situations  where  the  sand  is  driven  through  depressions  in  rock  beds,  or 
over  deposits  of  silicious  pebbles,  the  surface  of  the  stone  is  worn  and 
smoothed  much  more  effectually  than  it  could  be  by  running  water,  and 
you  may  pick  up,  in  such  localities,  rounded,  irregularly  broken  fragments 
of  agate,  which  have  received  from  the  attrition  of  the  sand  as  fine  a  polish 
as  could  be  given  them  by  the  wheel  of  the  lapidary. 

Very  interesting  observations  on  the  polishing  of  hard  stones  by  drift 
ing  sand  will  be  found  in  the  Geological  Eeport  of  William  P.  Blake  :  Pa 
cific  Railroad  Report,  vol.  v,  pp.  92,  230,  231.  The  same  geologist  observes, 
p.  242,  that  the  sand  of  the  Colorado  desert  does  not  rise  high  in  the  air, 
but  bounds  along  on  the  surface  or  only  a  few  inches  above  it. 

*  Wilkinson  says  that,  in  much  experience  in  the  most  sandy  parts  of 
the  Libyan  desert,  and  much  inquiry  of  the  best  native  sources,  he  never 
saw  or  heard  of  any  instance  of  danger  to  man  or  beast  from  the  mere 
accumulation  of  sand  transported  by  the  wind.  Chesney's  observations  in 


460  THE   SUEZ   CANAL. 

Another  circumstance  is  necessary  to  be  considered  in  esti 
mating  the  danger  to  which  the  arable  lands  of  Egypt  are 
exposed.  The  prevailing  wind  in  the  valley  of  the  Kile  and 
its  borders  is  from  the  north,  and  it  may  be  said  without 
exaggeration  that  the  north  wind  blows  for  three  quarters  of 
the  year.*  The  effect  of  winds  blowing  up  the  valley  is  to 
drive  the  sands  of  the  desert  plateau  which  border  it,  in  a 
direction  parallel  with  the  axis  of  the  valley,  not  transversely 
to  it ;  and  if  it  ran  in  a  straight  line,  the  north  wind  would 
carry  no  desert  sand  into  it.  There  are,  however,  both  curves 
and  angles  in  its  course,  and  hence,  wherever  its  direction 
deviates  from  that  of  the  wind,  it  might  receive  sand  drifts 
from  the  desert  plain  through  which  it  runs.  But,  in  the 
course  of  ages,  the  winds  have,  in  a  great  measure,  bared  the 
projecting  points  of  their  ancient  deposits,  and  no  great  accu 
mulations  remain  in  situations  from  which  either  a  north  or  a 
south  wind  would  carry  them  into  the  valley.f 

The  Suez  Canal. 

These  considerations  apply,  with  equal  force,  to  the  sup 
posed  danger  of  the  obstruction  of  the  Suez  Canal  by  the  drift- 
Arabia,  and  the  testimony  of  the  Bedouins  he  consulted,  are  to  the  same 
purpose.  The  dangers  of  the  simoom  are  of  a  different  character,  though 
they  are  certainly  aggravated  by  the  blinding  effects  of  the  light  particles 
of  dust  and  sand  borne  along  by  it,  and  by  that  of  the  inhalation  of  them 
upon  the  respiration. 

*  In  the  narrow  valley  of  the  Nile,  bounded  as  it  is,  above  the  Delta,  by 
high  cliffs,  all  air  currents  from  the  northern  quarter  become  north  winds, 
though  of  course  varying  in  partial  direction,  in  conformity  with  the  sinu 
osities  of  the  valley.  Upon  the  desert  plateau  they  incline  westward,  and 
have  already  borne  into  the  valley  the  sands  of  the  eastern  banks,  and 
driven  those  of  the  western  quite  out  of  the  Egyptian  portion  of  the  Nile 
basin. 

t  "  The  North  African  desert  falls  into  two  divisions :  the  Sahel,  or 
western,  and  the  Sahar,  or  eastern.  The  sands  of  the  Sahar  were,  at  a 
remote  period,  drifted  to  the  west.  In  the  Sahel,  the  prevailing  east 
winds  drive  the  sand-ocean  with  a  progressive  westward  motion.  The 
eastern  half  of  the  desert  is  swept  clean." — NAUMANJST,  Geognosie^  ii,  p.  1173. 


SANDS   OF   EGYPT.  4:61 

ing  of  the  desert  sands.  The  winds  across  the  isthmus  are 
almost  uniformly  from  the  north,  and  they  swept  it  clean  of 
flying  sands  long  ages  since.  The  traces  of  the  ancient  canal 
between  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Nile  are  easily  followed  for  a 
considerable  distance  from  Suez.  Had  the  drifts  upon  the 
isthmus  been  as  formidable  as  some  have  feared  and  others 
have  hoped,  those  traces  would  have  been  obliterated,  and 
Lake  Timsah  and  the  Bitter  Lakes  filled  up,  many  centuries 
ago.  The  few  particles  driven  by  the  rare  east  and  west 
winds  toward  the  line  of  the  canal,  would  easily  be  arrested 
by  plantations  or  other  simple  methods,  or  removed  by  dredg 
ing.  The  real  dangers  and  difficulties  of  this  magnificent 
enterprise — and  they  are  great — consist  in  the  nature  of  the 
soil  to  be  removed  in  order  to  form  the  line,  and  especially  in 
the  constantly  increasing  accumulation  of  sea  sand  at  the  south 
ern  terminus  by  the  tides  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  at  the  northern, 
by  the  action  of  the  winds.  Both  seas  are  shallow  for  miles 
from  the  shore,  and  the  excavation  and  maintenance  of  deep 
channels,  and  of  capacious  harbors  with  easy  and  secure  en 
trances,  in  such  localities,  is  doubtless  one  of  the  hardest  prob 
lems  offered  to  modern  engineers  for  practical  solution. 

Sands  of  Egypt. 

The  sand  let  fall  in  Egypt  by  the  north  wind  is  derived, 
not  from  the  desert,  but  from  a  very  different  source — the  sea. 
Considerable  quantities  of  sand  are  thrown  up  by  the  Mediter 
ranean,  at  and  between  the  mouths  of  the  Nile,  and  indeed 
along  almost  the  whole  southern  coast  of  that  sea,  and  drifted 
into  the  interior  to  distances  varying  according  to  the  force  of 
the  wind  and  the  abundance  and  quality  of  the  material.  The 
sand  so  transported  contributes  to  the  gradual  elevation  of  the 
Delta,  and  of  the  banks  and  bed  of  the  river  itself.  But  just 
in  proportion  as  the  bed  of  the  stream  is  elevated,  the  height 
of  the  water  in  the  annual  inundations  is  increased  also,  and  as 
the  inclination  of  the  channel  is  diminished,  the  rapidity  of  the 
current  is  checked,  and  the  deposition  of  the  slime  it  holds  in 


4:62  SANDS    OF  EGYPT. 

suspension  consequently  promoted.  Thus  the  winds  and  the 
water,  moving  in  contrary  directions,  join  in  producing  a  com 
mon  effect. 

The  sand,  blown  over  the  Delta  and  the  cultivated  land 
higher  up  the  stream  during  the  inundation,  is  covered  or 
mixed  with  the  fertile  earth  brought  down  by  the  river,  and 
no  serious  injury  is  sustained  from  it.  That  spread  over  the 
same  ground  after  the  water  has  subsided,  and  during  the 
short  period  when  the  soil  is  not  stirred  by  cultivation  or  cov 
ered  by  the  flood,  forms  a  thin  pellicle  over  the  surface  as  far 
as  it  extends,  and  serves  to  divide  and  distinguish  the  succes 
sive  layers  of  slime  deposited  by  the  annual  inundations.  The 
particles  taken  up  by  the  wind  on  the  sea  beach  are  borne 
onward,  by  a  hopping  motion,  or  rolled  along  the  surface, 
until  they  are  arrested  by  the  temporary  cessation  of  the  wind, 
by  vegetation,  or  by  some  other  obstruction,  and  they  may,  in 
process  of  time,  accumulate  in  large  masses,  under  the  lee  of 
rocky  projections,  buildings,  or  other  barriers  which  break  the 
force  of  the  wind. 

In  these  facts  we  find  the  true  explanation  of  the  sand 
drifts,  which  have  half  buried  the  Sphinx  and  so  many  other 
ancient  monuments  in  that  part  of  Egypt.  These  drifts,  as  I 
have  said,  are  not  primarily  from  the  desert,  but  from  the  sea ; 
and,  as  might  be  supposed  from  the  distance  they  have  trav 
elled,  they  have  been  long  in  gathering.  While  Egypt  was  a 
great  and  flourishing  kingdom,  measures  were  taken  to  protect 
its  territory  against  the  encroachment  of  sand,  whether  from 
the  desert  or  from  the  sea ;  but  the  foreign  conquerors,  who 
destroyed  so  many  of  its  religious  monuments,  did  not  spare 
its  public  works,  and  the  process  of  physical  degradation  un 
doubtedly  began  as  early  as  the  Persian  invasion.  The  urgent 
necessity,  which  has  compelled  all  the  successive  tyrannies  of 
Egypt  to  keep  up  some  of  the  canals  and  other  arrangements 
for  irrigation,  was  not  felt  with  respect  to  the  advancement  of 
the  sands  ;  for  their  progress  was  so  slow  as  hardly  to  be  per 
ceptible  in  the  course  of  a  single  reign,  and  long  experience 
has  shown  that,  from  the  natural  effect  of  the  inundations,  the 


SAND   DUNES    AND    PLAINS.  463 

cultivable  soil  of  the  valley  is,  on  the  whole,  trenching  upon 
the  domain  of  the  desert,  not  retreating  before  it. 

The  oases  of  the  Libyan,  as  well  as  of  many  Asiatic  deserts, 
have  no  such  safeguards.  The  sands  are  fast  encroaching  upon 
them,  and  threaten  soon  to  engulf  them,  unless  man  shall  resort 
to  artesian  wells  and  plantations,  or  to  some  other  efficient 
means  of  checking  the  advance  of  this  formidable  enemy,  in 
time  to  save  these  islands  of  the  waste  from  final  destruction. 

Accumulations  of  sand  are,  in  certain  cases,  beneficial  as  a 
protection  against  the  ravages  of  the  sea ;  but,  in  general,  the 
vicinity,  and  especially  the  shifting  of  bodies  of  this  material, 
are  destructive  to  human  industry,  and  hence,  in  civilized 
countries,  measures  are  taken  to  prevent  its  spread.  This, 
however,  can  be  done  only  where  the  population  is  large  and 
enlightened,  and  the  value  of  the  soil,  or  of  the  artificial  erec 
tions  and  improvements  upon  it,  is  considerable.  Hence  in 
the  deserts  of  Africa  and  of  Asia,  and  the  inhabited  lands 
which  border  on  them,  no  pains  are  usually  taken  to  check  the 
drifts,  and  when  once  the  fields,  the  houses,  the  springs,  or  the 
canals  of  irrigation  are  covered  or  choked,  the  district  is  aban 
doned  without  a  struggle,  and  surrendered  to  perpetual  deso 
lation.* 

Sand  Dunes  and  Sand  Plains. 

Two  forms  of  sand  deposit  are  specially  important  in  Eu 
ropean  and  American  geography.  The  one  is  that  of  dune  or 
shifting  hillock  upon  the  coast,  the  other  that  of  barren  plain 
in  the  interior.  The  coast  dunes  are  composed  of  sand  washed 

*  Li  parts  of  the  Algerian  desert,  some  efforts  are  made  to  retard  the 
advance  of  sand  dunes  which  threaten  to  overwhelm  villages.  "  At  Debila," 
says  Laurent,  "  the  lower  parts  of  the  lofty  dunes  are  planted  with  palms, 
*  *  *  but  they  are  constantly  menaced  with  burial  by  the  sands.  The 
only  remedy  employed  by  the  natives  consists  in  little  dry  walls  of  crystal 
lized  gypsum,  built  on  the  crests  of  the  dimes,  together  with  hedges  of 
dead  palm  leaves.  These  defensive  measures  are  aided  by  incessant  labor ; 
for  every  day  the  people  take  up  in  baskets  the  sand  blown  over  to  them 
the  night  before  and  carry  it  back  to  the  other  side  of  the  dune."—* 
Memoires  sur  lo  Sahara,  p.  14. 


4:64:  SAND   DUNES   AND   PLAINS. 

ap  from  the  depths  of  the  sea  by  the  waves,  and  heaped  in 
knolls  and  ridges  by  the  winds.  The  sand  with  which  many 
plains  are  covered,  appears  sometimes  to  have  been  deposited 
upon  them  while  they  were  yet  submerged,  sometimes  to  have 
been  drifted  from  the  sea  coast,  and  scattered  over  them  by 
wind  currents,  sometimes  to  have  been  washed  upon  them  by 
running  water.  In  these  latter  cases,  the  deposit,  though  in 
itself  considerable,  is  comparatively  narrow  in  extent  and 
irregular  in  distribution,  while,  in  the  former,  it  is  often  evenly 
spread  over  a  very  wide  surface.  In  all  great  bodies  of  either 
sort,  the  silicious  grains  are  the  principal  constituent,  though, 
when  not  resulting  from  the  disintegration  of  silicious  rock 
and  still  remaining  in  place,  they  are  generally  accompanied 
with  a  greater  or  less  admixture  of  other  mineral  particles,  and 
of  animal  and  vegetable  remains,*  and  they  are,  also,  usually 
somewhat  changed  in  consistence  by  the  ever-varying  condi 
tions  of  temperature  and  moisture  to  which  they  have  been 
exposed  since  their  deposit.  Unless  the  proportion  of  these 
]atter  ingredients  is  so  large  as  to  create  a  certain  adhesiveness 
in  the  mass — in  which  case  it  can  no  longer  properly  be  called 
sand — it  is  infertile,  and,  if  not  charged  with  water,  partially 
agglutinated  by  iron,  lime,  or  other  cement,  or  confined  by 
alluvion  resting  upon  it,  it  is  much  inclined  to  drift,  whenever, 


*  Organic  constituents,  such  as  comminuted  shells,  and  silicious  and 
calcareous  exuvice  of  infusorial  animals  and  plants,  are  sometimes  found 
mingled  in  considerable  quantities  with  mineral  sands.  These  are  usually 
the  remains  of  aquatic  vegetables  or  animals,  but  not  uniformly  so,  for  the 
microscopic  organisms,  whose  flinty  cases  enter  so  largely  into  the  sand- 
beds  of  the  Mark  of  Brandenburg,  are  still  living  and  prolific  in  the  dry 
earth.  See  WITTWEE,  PhysUcalische  Geographic-,  p.  142. 

The  desert  on  both  sides  of  the  Nile  is  inhabited  by  a  land  snail,  and 
thousands  of  its  shells  are  swept  along  and  finally  buried  in  the  drifts  by 
every  wind.  Every  handful  of  the  sand  contains  fragments  of  them. 
FORCHHAMMER,  in  LEONARD  und  BRONX'S  Jcilirluch,  1841,  p.  8,  says  of  the 
sand  hills  of  the  Danish  coast :  "  It  is  not  rare  to  find,  high  in  the  knolls, 
marine  shells,  and  especially  those  of  the  oyster.  They  are  due  to  the 
oyster  eater  [Hcemalopm  ostralegus],  which  carries  his  prey  to  the  top  of 
the  dunes  to  devour  it."  See  also  STARING,  De  Bodcm  van,  N.  I.  p.  321. 


COAST  DUNES.  465 

by  any  chance,  the  vegetable  network  which,  in  most  eases, 
thinly  clothes  and  at  the  same  time  confines  it,  is  broken. 

Human  industry  has  not  only  fixed  the  flying  dunes,  but, 
by  mixing  clay  and  other  tenacious  earths  with  the  superficial 
stratum  of  extensive  sand  plains,  and  by  the  application  of  fer 
tilizing  substances,  it  has  made  them  abundantly  productive 
of  vegetable  life.  These  latter  processes  belong  to  agriculture 
and  not  to  geography,  and,  therefore,  are  not  embraced  within 
the  scope  of  the  present  subject.  But  the  preliminary  steps, 
whereby  wastes  of  loose,  drifting  barren  sands  are  transformed 
into  wooded  knolls  and  plains,  and  finally,  through  the  accu 
mulation  of  vegetable  mould,  into  arable  ground,  constitute  a 
conquest  over  nature  which  precedes  agriculture — a  geograph 
ical  revolution — and,  therefore,  an  account  of  the  means  by 
which  the  change  has  been  effected  belongs  properly  to  the 
history  of  man's  influence  on  the  great  features  of  physical 
geography.  I  proceed,  then,  to  examine  the  structure  of 
dunes,  and  to  describe  the  warfare  man  wages  with  the  sand 
hills,  striving  on  the  one  hand  to  maintain  and  even  extend 
them,  as  a  natural  barrier  against  encroachments  of  the  sea, 
and,  on  the  other,  to  check  their  moving  and  wandering  pro 
pensities,  and  prevent  them  from  trespassing  upon  the  fields  he 
has  planted  and  the  habitations  in  which  he  dwells. 

Coast  Dunes. 

Coast  dunes  are  oblong  ridges  or  round  hillocks,  formed  by 
the  action  of  the  wind  upon  sands  thrown  up  by  the-waves  on 
the  beach  of  seas,  and  sometimes  of  fresh-water  lakes.  On 
most  coasts,  the  supply  of  sand  for  the  formation  of  dunes  is 
derived  from  tidal  waves.  The  flow  of  the  tide  is  more  rapid, 
and  consequently  its  transporting  power  greater,  than  that  of 
the  ebb  ;  the  momentum,  acquired  by  the  heavy  particles  in 
rolling  in  with  the  water,  tends  to  carry  them  even  beyond  the 
flow  of  the  waves  ;  and  at  the  turn  of  the  tide,  the  water  is  in 
a  state  of  repose  long  enough  to  allow  it  to  let  fall  much  of  the 
solid  matter  it  holds  in  suspension.  Hence,  on  all  IOWT,  tide- 
30 


£66  COAST   DUNES. 

washed  coasts  of  seas  with  sandy  bottoms,  there  exist  several 
conditions  favorable  to  the  formation  of  sand  deposits  along 
high-water  mark.*  If  the  land  winds  are  of  greater  fre- 

*  There  are  larious  reasons  why  the  formation  of  dunes  is  confined  to 
low  shores,  and  this  law  is  so  universal,  that  when  bluffs  are  surmounted 
by  them,  there  is  always  cause  to  suspect  upheaval,  or  the  removal  of  a 
sloping  beach  in  front  of  the  bluff,  after  the  dunes  were  formed.  Bold 
shores  are  usually  without  a  sufficient  beach  for  the  accumulation  of  large 
Deposits ;  they  are  commonly  washed  by  a  sea  too  deep  to  bring  up  sand 
from  its  bottom ;  their  abrupt  elevation,  even  if  moderate  in  amount, 
would  still  be  too  great  to  allow  ordinary  winds  to  lift  the  sand  above 
them ;  and  their  influence  in  deadening  the  wind  which  blows  toward 
them  would  even  more  effectually  prevent  the  raising  of  sand  from  the 
beach  at  their  foot. 

Forchhammer,  describing  the  coast  of  Jutland,  says  that,  in  high  winds, 
"  one  can  hardly  stand  upon  the  dunes,  except  when  they  are  near  the 
water  line  and  have  been  cut  down  perpendicularly  by  the  waves.  Then 
the  wind  is  little  or  not  at  all  felt — a  fact  of  experience  very  common  on 
our  coasts,  observed  on  all  the  steep  shore  bluffs  of  two  hundred  feet  in 
height,  and,  in  the  Faroe  Islands,  on  precipices  two  thousand  feet  high.  In 
heavy  gales  in  those  islands,  the  cattle  fly  to  the  very  edge  of  the  cliffs  for 
shelter,  and  frequently  fall  over.  The  wind,  impinging  against  the  vertical 
wall,  creates  an  ascending  current  which  shoots  somewhat  past  the  crest 
of  the  rock,  and  thus  the  observer  or  the  animal  is  protected  against  the 
tempest  by  a  barrier  of  air." — LEONHARD  und  BKONN,  Jdhrbuch-,  1841,  p.  3. 

The  calming,  or  rather  diversion,  of  the  wind  by  cliffs  extends  to  a  con 
siderable  distance  in  front  of  them,  and  no  wind  would  have  sufficient 
force  to  raise  the  sand  vertically,  parallel  to  the  face  of  a  bluff,  even  to  the 
height  of  twenty  feet. 

It  is  very  commonly  believed  that  it  is  impossible  to  grow  forest  trees 
on  sea-shore  bluffs,  or  points  much  exposed  to  strong  winds.  The  obser 
vations  just  cited  tend  to  show  that  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  protect  trees 
from  the  mechanical  effect  of  the  wind,  by  screens  much  lower  than  the 
height  to  which  they  are  expected  to  grow.  Eecent  experiments  confirm 
this,  and  it  is  found  that,  though  the  outer  row  or  rows  may  suffer  from 
the  wind,  every  tree  shelters  a  taller  one  behind  it.  Extensive  groves  have 
thus  been  formed  in  situations  where  an  isolated  tree  would  not  grow  at  all. 

Piper,  in  his  Trees  of  America,  p.  19,  gives  an  interesting  account  of  Mr. 
Tudor's  success  in  planting  trees  on  the  bleak  and  barren  shore  of  Nahant. 
"Mr.  Tudor,"  observes  he,  "has  planted  more  than  ten  thousand  trees  at 
Nahant,  and,  by  the  results  of  his  experiments,  has  fully  demonstrated  that 
trees,  properly  cared  for  in  the  beginning,  may  be  made  to  grow  up  to  the 


DUNES   ON   SHORES   OF   LAKE   MICHIGAN.  467 

quency,  duration,  or  strength  than  the  sea  winds,  the  sands 
left  by  the  retreating  wave  will  be  constantly  blown  back  into 
the  water  ;  but  if  the  prevailing  air  currents  are  in  the  oppo 
site  direction,  the  sands  will  soon  be  carried  out  of  the  reacli 
of  the  highest  waves,  and  transported  continually  farther  and 
farther  into  the  interior  of  the  land,  unless  obstructed  by  high 
grounds,  vegetation,  or  other  obstacles. 

The  tide,  though  a  usual,  is  by  no  means  a  necessary  con 
dition  for  the  accumulations  of  sand  out  of  which  dunes  are 
formed.  The  Baltic  and  the  Mediterranean  are  almost  tideless 
seas,  but  there  are  dunes  on  the  Hussian  and  Prussian  coasts 
of  the  Baltic,  and  at  the  mouths  of  the  l^ile  and  many  other 
points  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  The  vast  shoals  in 
the  latter  sea,  known  to  the  ancients  as  the  Greater  and  Lesser 
Syrtis,  are  of  marine  origin.  They  are  still  filling  up  with 
sand,  washed  up  from  greater  depths,  or  sometimes  drifted 
from  the  coast  in  small  quantities,  and  will  probably  be  con 
verted,  at  some  future  period,  into  dry  land  covered  with  sand 
hills.  There  are  also  extensive  ranges  of  dunes  upon  the  east 
ern  shores  of  the  Caspian,  and  at  the  southern,  or  rather  south 
eastern  extremity  of  Lake  Michigan.*  There  is  no  doubt  that 
this  latter  lake  formerly  extended  much  farther  in  that  direc 
tion,  but  its  southern  portion  has  gradually  shoaled  and  at  last 
been  converted  into  solid  land,  in  consequence  of  the  preva 
lence  of  the  northwest  winds.  These  blow  over  the  lake  a 
large  part  of  the  year,  and  create  a  southwardly  set  of  the  cur 
rents,  which  wash  up  sand  from  the  bed  of  the  lake  and  throw 
it  on  shore.  Sand  is  taken  up  from  the  beach  at  Michigan  City 
by  every  wind  from  that  quarter,  and,  after  a  heavy  blow  of 

very  bounds  of  the  ocean,  exposed  to  the  biting  of  the  wind  and  the  spray 
of  the  sea.  The  only  shelter  they  require  is,  at  first,  some  interruption  to 
break  the  current  of  the  wind,  such  as  fences,  houses,  or  other  trees." 

*  The  careful  observations  of  Colonel  J.  D.  Graham,  of  the  United  States 
Army,  show  a  tide  of  about  three  inches  in  Lake  Michigan.  See  "  A  Lunar 
Tidal  Wave  in  the  Korth  American  Lakes,"  demonstrated  by  Lieut-Colonel 
J.  D.  Graham,  in  the  fourteenth  volume  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  American 
Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science. 


4:68  FORMATION   OF   DUNES — SAND   BANKS. 

some  hours'  duration,  sand  ridges  may  be  observed  on  the 
north  side  of  the  fences,  like  the  snow  wreaths  deposited  by  a 
drifting  wind  in  winter.  Some  of  the  particles  are  carried 
back  by  contrary  winds,  but  most  of  them  lodge  on  or  behind 
the  dunes,  or  in  the  moist  soil  near  the  lake,  or  are  entangled 
by  vegetables,  and  tend  permanently  to  elevate  the  level. 
Like  eifects  are  produced  by  constant  sea  winds,  and  dunes 
will  generally  be  formed  on  all  low  coasts  where  such  prevail, 
whether  in  tideless  or  in  tidal  waters. 

Jobard  thus  describes  the  modus  operandi,  under  ordinary 
circumstances,  at  the  mouths  of  the  Nile,  where  a  tide  can 
scarcely  be  detected :  "  When  a  wave  breaks,  it  deposits  an 
almost  imperceptible  line  of  fine  sand.  The  next  wave  brings 
also  its  contribution,  and  shoves  the  preceding  line  a  little 
higher.  As  soon  as  the  particles  are  fairly  out  of  the  reach  of 
the  water  they  are  dried  by  the  heat  of  the  burning  sun,  and 
Immediately  seized  by  the  wind  and  rolled  or  borne  farther 
inland.  The  gravel  is  not  thrown  out  by  the  waves,  but  rolls 
backward  and  forward  until  it  is  worn  down  to  the  state  of 
fine  sand,  when  it,  in  its  turn,  is  cast  upon  the  land  and  taken 
up  by  the  wind."  *  This  description  applies  only  to  the  com 
mon  every-day  action  of  wind  and  water  ;  but  just  in  propor 
tion  to  the  increasing  force  of  the  wind  and  the  weaves,  there  is 
an  increase  in  the  quantity  of  sand,  and  in  the  magnitude  of 
the  particles  carried  off  from  the  beach  by  it,  and,  of  course, 
every  storm  in  a  landward  direction  adds  sensibly  to  the  accu 
mulation  upon  the  shore. 

Sand  Banks. 

Although  dunes,  properly  so  called,  are  found  only  on  dry 
land  and  above  ordinary  high-water  mark,  and  owe  their 
elevation  and  structure  to  the  action  of  the  wind,  yet,  upon 
many  shelving  coasts,  accumulations  of  sand  much  resembling 
dunes  are  formed  under  water  at  some  distance  from  the  shore 
by  the  oscillations  of  the  waves,  and  are  well  known  by  the 

*  STARING,  De  Bodem  van  Nederland,  i,  p.  327,  note. 


DUNES   OF   AMERICA.  469 

name  of  sand  banks.  They  are  usually  rather  ridges  than 
banks,  of  moderate  inclination,  and  with  the  steepest  slope  sea 
ward  ;  and  their  form  differs  from  that  of  dunes  only  in  being 
lower  and  more  continuous.  Upon  the  western  coast  of  the 
island  of  Amrum,  for  example,  there  are  three  rows  of  such 
banks,  the  summits  of  which  are  at  a  distance  of  perhaps  a 
couple  of  miles  from  each  other ;  so  that,  including  the  width 
of  the  banks  themselves,  the  spaces  between  them,  and  the 
breadth  of  the  zone  of  dunes  upon  the  land,  the  belt  of 
moving  sands  on  that  coast  is  probably  not  less  than  eight 
miles  wide. 

Under  ordinary  circumstances,  sand  banks  are  always  roll 
ing  landward,  and  they  compose  the  magazine  from  which 
the  material  for  the  dunes  is  derived.  The  dunes,  in  fact,  are 
but  aquatic  sand  banks  transferred  to  dry  land.  The  laws  of 
their  formation  are  closely  analogous,  because  the  action  of  the 
two  fluids,  by  which  they  are  respectively  accumulated  and 
built  up,  is  very  similar  when  brought  to  bear  upon  loose  par 
ticles  of  solid  matter.  It  would,  indeed,  seem  that  the  slow 
and  comparatively  regular  movements  of  the  heavy,  unelastic 
water  ought  to  affect  such  particles  very  differently  from  the 
sudden  and  fitful  impulses  of  the  light  and  elastic  air.  But 
the  velocity  of  the  wind  currents  gives  them  a  mechanical 
force  approximating  to  that  of  the  slower  waves,  and,  however 
difficult  it  may  be  to  explain  all  the  phenomena  that  charac 
terize  the  structure  of  the  dunes,  observation  has  proved  that 
it  is  nearly  identical  with  that  of  submerged  sand  banks.  The 
differences  of  form  are  generally  ascribable  to  the  greater  num 
ber  and  variety  of  surface  accidents  of  the  ground  on  which 
the  sand  hills  of  the  land  are  built  up,  and  to  the  more  frequent 
changes,  and  wider  variety  of  direction,  in  the  courses  of  the 
wind. 

Dunes  on  the  Coast  of  America. 

Upon  the  Atlantic  coast  of  the  United  States,  the  preva 
lence  of  western  or  off-shore  winds  is  unfavorable  to  the  forma 
tion  of  dunes,  and,  though  marine  currents  lodge  vast  quan- 


470  DUNES  OF  WESTERN  EUEOPE. 

titles  of  sand,  in  the  form  of  banks,  on  that  coast,  its  shores  are 
proportionally  more  free  from  sand  hills  than  some  others  of 
lesser  extent.  There  are,  however,  very  important  exceptions. 
The  action  of  the  tide  throws  much  sand  upon  some  points  of 
the  New  England  coast,  as  well  as  upon  the  beaches  of  Long 
Island  and  other  more  southern  shores,  and  here  dunes  resem 
bling  those  of  Europe  are  formed.  There  are  also  extensive 
ranges  of  dunes  on  the  Pacific  coast  of  the  United  States,  and 
at  San  Francisco  they  border  some  of  the  streets  of  the  city. 

The  dunes  of  America  are  far  older  than  her  civilization, 
and  the  soil  they  threaten  or  protect  possesses,  in  general,  too 
little  value  to  justify  any  great  expenditure  in.  measures  for 
arresting  their  progress  or  preventing  their  destruction. 
Hence,  great  as  is  their  extent  and  their  geographical  im 
portance,  they  have,  at  present,  no  such  intimate  relations  to 
human  life  as  to  render  them  objects  of  special  interest  in  the 
point  of  view  I  am  ta.king,  and  I  do  not  know  that  the  laws 
of  their  formation  and  motion  have  been  made  a  subject  of 
original  investigation  by  any  American  observer. 

Dunes  of  Western  Europe. 

Upon  the  western  coast  of  Europe,  on  the  contrary,  the 
ravages  occasioned  by  the  movement  of  sand  dunes,  and  the 
serious  consequences  often  resulting  from  the  destruction  of 
them,  have  long  engaged  the  earnest  attention  of  governments 
and  of  scientific  men,  and  for  nearly  a  century  persevering  and 
systematic  effort  has  been  made  to  bring  them  under  human 
control.  The  subject  has  been  carefully  studied  in  Denmark 
and  the  adjacent  duchies,  in  Western  Prussia,  in  the  Nether 
lands,  and  in  France ;  and  the  experiments  in  the  way  of 
arresting  the  drifting  of  the  dunes,  and  of  securing  them,  and 
the  lands  they  shelter,  from  the  encroachments  of  the  sea,  have 
resulted  in  the  adoption  of  a  system  of  coast  improvement  sub 
stantially  the  same  in  all  these  countries.  The  sands,  like  the 
forests,  have  now  their  special  literature,  and  the  volumes  and 
memoirs,  which  describe  them  and  the  processes  employed  to 


FORMATION   OF   DUNES.  471 

subdue  them,  are  full  of  scientific  interest  and  of  practical 
instruction.* 

Formation  of  Dunes. 

The  laws  which  govern  the  formation  of  dunes  are  substan 
tially  these.  We  have  seen  that,  under  certain  conditions, 
sand  is  accumulated  above  high-water  mark  on  low  sea  and 
lake  shores.  So  long  as  the  sand  is  kept  wet  by  the  spray  or 
by  capillary  attraction,  it  is  not  disturbed  by  air  currents,  but 
as  soon  as  the  waves  retire  sufficiently  to  allow  it  to  dry,  it 

*  The  principal  special  works  and  essays  on  this  subject  known  to  me  are : 

BEEMOXTIEB,  Memoire  sur  les  Dunes,  etc.,  1790,  reprinted  in  Annales  des 
Fonts  et  Chaussees,  1833,  ler  semestre,  pp.  145-186. 

Rapport  sur  les  different*  Memoires  de  M.  Bremontier,  par  LAUMOXT  et 
autres,  1806,  same  volume,  pp.  192,  224. 

LEFOET,  Notice  sur  les  Travaux  de  Fixation  des  Dunes,  Annales  des 
Pouts  et  Chaussees,  1831,  2me  semestre,  pp.  320-332. 

FORCHIIAMMER,  Geognostische  Studien  am  Meeres  Ufer,  in  LEONHARD 
und  BRONX,  JaJirbucli,  etc.,  1841,  pp.  1,  88. 

J.  G.  KOHL,  Die  Inseln  und  Marschen  der  Herzogthilmer  Schleswig  und 
Hohtein,  1846,  vol.  ii,  pp.  112-162,  193-204. 

LAVAL,  Memoire  sur  les  Dunes  du  Golfe  de  Gascogne,  Annales  des  Ponts 
et  Chaussees,  184-7,  2me  semestre,  pp.  218-268. 

G.  0.  A.  KEATJSE,  Der  Duncribau  auf  den  Ostsce-Kilsten  West-Preussens, 
1850,  1  vol.  8vo. 

W.  0.  H.  STARING,  De  Bodcm  van  Nedcrlaiul,  1856,  vol.  i,  pp.  310-341, 
and  424-431. 

Same  author,  Voormaals  en  Thans,  1858,  pages  cited. 

0.  0.  ANDRESEX,  Om  Klitformationen  og  Klittens  Behandling  og  Besty- 
relse,  1861,  1  vol.  8vo,  x,  392  pp.,  much  the  most  complete  treatise  on  the 
subject. 

ANDRESEX  cites,  upon  the  origin  of  the  dunes :  HULL,  Over  den  Oorsprong 
en  de  Geschiedenis  der  Hollandsche  Duinen,  1838,  and  GROSS'S  Veiledning 
'ced  Behandlingen  af  Sandflugtstrcekningcrne,  1847;  and  upon  the  improve 
ment  of  sand  plains  by  planting,  PANXEWITZ,  Anleitung  sum  Anbau  der 
Sandfiachen,  1832.  I  am  not  acquainted  with  either  of  the  latter  two 
works  but  I  have  consulted  with  advantage,  on  this  subject,  DELAMARRE, 
Hhioriquc,  de  la  Creation  d*une  Richesse  millionaire  par  la  culture  de$ 
Pins,  1827  ;  BOITEL,  Mise  en  valcur  des  terres  pauvres  par  le  Pin  maritime, 
1857  ;  and  BRINCKEX,  Ansichten  ulter  die  Bewaldung  der  Steppen  des  Eu- 
ropdischen  Russlands,  1854. 


472  FORMATION   OF  DUNES. 

becomes  the  sport  of  the  wind,  and  is  driven  up  the  gently 
sloping  beach  until  it  is  arrested  by  stones,  vegetables,  or  other 
obstructions,  and  thus  an  accumulation  is  formed  which  consti 
tutes  the  foundation  of  a  dune.  However  slight  the  elevation 
thus  created,  it  serves  to  stop  or  retard  the  progress  of  the  sand 
grains  which  are  driven  against  its  shoreward  face,  and  to  pro 
tect  from  the  further  influence  of  the  wind  the  particles  which 
are  borne  beyond  it,  or  rolled  over  its  crest,  and  fall  down 
behind  it.  If  the  shore  above  the  beach  line  were  perfectly 
level  and  straight,  the  grass  or  bushes  upon  it  of  equal  height, 
the  sand  thrown  up  by  the  waves  uniform  in  size  and  weight 
of  particles  as  well  as  in  distribution,  and  if  the  action  of  the 
wind  wrere  steady  and  regular,  a  continuous  bank  would  be 
formed,  everywhere  alike  in  height  and  cross  section.  But  no 
such  constant  conditions  anywhere  exist.  The  banks  are 
curved,  broken,  unequal  in  elevation ;  they  are  sometimes 
bare,  sometimes  clothed  with  vegetables  of  different  structure 
and  dimensions ;  the  sand  thrown  up  is  variable  in  quantity 
and  character ;  and  the  winds  are  shifting,  gusty,  vortical, 
and  often  blowing  in  very  narrow  currents.  Prom  all  these 
causes,  instead  of  uniform  hills,  there  rise  irregular  rows  of 
sand  heaps,  and  these,  as  would  naturally  be  expected,  are  of 
a  pyramidal,  or  rather  conical  shape,  and  connected  at  bottom 
by  more  or  less  continuous  ridges  of  the  same  material. 

On  a  receding  coast,  dunes  will  not  attain  so  great  a  height 
as  on  more  secure  shores,  because  they  are  undermined  and 
carried  off  before  they  have  time  to  reach  their  greatest  di 
mensions.  Hence,  while  at  sheltered  points  in  Southwestern 
France,  there  are  dunes  three  hundred  feet  or  more  in  height, 
those  on  the  Frisic  Islands  and  the  exposed  parts  of  the  coast 
of  Schleswig-Holstein  range  only  from  twenty  to  one  hundred 
feet.  On  the  western  shores  of  Africa,  it  is  said  that  they 
sometimes  attain  an  elevation  of  six  hundred  feet.  This  is  one 
of  the  very  few  points  known  to  geographers  where  desert 
sands  are  advancing  seaward,  and  here  they  rise  to  the  great 
est  altitude  to  which  sand  grains  can  be  carried  by  the  wind. 

The  hillocks,  once  deposited,  are  held  together  and  kept  in 


FORMATION   OF  DUNES.  473 

shape,  partly  by  mere  gravity,  and  partly  by  the  slight  cohe 
sion  of  the  lime,  clay,  and  organic  matter  mixed  with  the 
sand ;  and  it  is  observed  that,  from  capillary  attraction,  evap 
oration  from  lower  strata,  and  retention  of  rain  water,  they 
are  always  moist  a  little  below  the  surface.*  By  successive 
accumulations,  they  gradually  rise  to  the  height  of  thirty, 
fifty,  sixty,  or  a  hundred  feet,  and  sometimes  even  much 
higher.  Strong  winds,  instead  of  adding  to  their  elevation, 
sweep  off  loose  particles  from  their  surface,  and  these,  with 

*  "  Dunes  are  always  full  of  water,  from  the  action  of  capillary  attrac 
tion.  Upon  the  summits,  one  seldom  needs  to  dig  more  than  a  foot  to  find 
the  sand  moist,  and  in  the  depressions,  fresh  water  is  met  with  near  the 
surface." — FORCIIIIAMMER,  in  LEOXIIAED  und  BRONX,  for  1841,  p.  5,  note. 

On  the  other  hand,  Andresen,  who  has  very  carefully  investigated  this 
as  well  as  all  other  dune  phenomena,  maintains  that  the  humidity  of  the 
sand  ridges  cannot  be  derived  from  capillary  attraction.  He  found  by 
experiment  that  drift  sand  was  not  moistened  to  a  greater  height  than 
eight  and  a  half  inches,  after  standing  a  whole  night  in  water.  He 
states  the  minimum  of  water  contained  by  the  sand  of  the  dunes,  one  foot 
below  the  surface,  after  a  long  drought,  at  two  per  cent.,  the  maximum, 
after  a  rainy  month,  at  four  per  cent.  At  greater  depths  the  quantity  is 
larger.  The  hygroscopicity  of  the  sand  of  the  coast  of  Jutland  he  found 
to  be  thirty-three  per  cent,  by  measure,  or  21.5  by  weight.  The  annual 
precipitation  on  that  coast  is  twenty-seven  inches,  and,  as  the  evaporation 
is  about  the  same,  he  argues  that  rain  water  does  not  penetrate  far  beneath 
the  surface  of  the  dunes,  and  concludes  that  their  humidity  can  be  explained 
only  by  evaporation  from  below. — Om  Klifformationen,  pp.  106-110. 

In  the  dunes  of  Algeria,  water  is  so  abundant  that  wells  are  constantly 
dug  in  them  at  high  points  on  their  surface.  They  are  sunk  to  the  depth 
of  three  or  four  metres  only,  and  the  water  rises  to  the  height  of  a  metro 
in  them. — LAURENT,  Memoire  sur  le  Sahara,  pp.  11,  12,  13. 

The  same  writer  observes  (p.  14)  that  the  hollows  in  the  dunes  are 
planted  with  palms  which  find  moisture  enough  a  little  below  the  surface. 
It  would  hence  seem  that  the  proposal  to  fix  the  dunes  which  are  supposed 
to  threaten  the  Suez  Canal,  by  planting  the  maritime  pine  and  other  trees 
upon  them,  is  not  altogether  so  absurd  as  it  is  thought  to  be  by  some  of 
those  disinterested  philanthropists  of  other  nations  who  are  distressed  with 
fears  that  French  capitalists  will  lose  the  money  they  have  invested  in  that 
great  undertaking. 

Ponds  of  water  are  often  found  in  the  depressions  between  the  sand 
hills  of  the  dune  chains  in  the  2u>rth  American  desert. 


4:74:  CHARACTER   OF   DUNE    SAND. 

others  blown  over  or  between  them,  build  up  a  second  row  of 
dunes,  and  so  on  according  to  the  character  of  the  wind,  the 
supply  and  consistence  of  the  sand,  and  the  face  of  the  country 
In  this  way  is  formed  a  belt  of  sand  dunes,  irregularly  dis 
persed  and  varying  much  in  height  and  dimensions,  and  some 
times  many  miles  in  breadth.  On  the  Island  of  Sylt,  in  the 
German  Sea,  where  there  are  several  rows,  the  width  of  the 
belt  is  from  half  a  mile  to  a  mile.  There  are  similar  ranges 
on  the  coast  of  Holland,  exceeding  two  miles  in  breadth,  while 
at  the  mouths  of  the  Nile  they  form  a  zone  not  less  than  ten 
miles  wide.  The  base  of  some  of  the  dunes  in  the  Delta  of 
the  Nile  is  reached  by  the  river  during  the  annual  inundation, 
and  the  infiltration  of  the  water,  which  contains  lime,  has  con 
verted  the  lower  strata  into  a  silicious  limestone,  or  rather  a 
calcareous  sandstone,  and  thus  afforded  an  opportunity  of 
studying  the  structure  of  that  rock  in  a  locality  where  its 
origin  and  mode  of  aggregation  and  solidification  are  known. 

Character  of  Dune  Sand. 

"  Dune  sand,"  says  Staring,  u  consists  of  weU-rounded 
grains  of  quartz,  more  or  less  colored  by  iron,  and  often  min 
gled  with  fragments  of  shells,  small  indeed,  but  still  visible  to 
the  naked  eye.*  These  fragments  are  not  constant  constit 
uents  of  dune  sand.  They  are  sometimes  found  at  the  very 
summits  of  the  hillocks,  as  at  Overveen ;  in  the  King's  Dune, 

*  According  to  the  French  authorities,  the  dunes  of  France  are  not 
always  composed  of  quartzose  sand.  "  The  dune  sands "  of  different 
characters,  says  Bremontier,  "  partake  of  the  nature  of  the  different  mate 
rials  which  compose  them.  At  certain  points  on  the  coast  of  Normandy 
they  are  found  to  be  purely  calcareous ;  they  are  of  mixed  composition  on 
the  shores  of  Brittany  and  Saintonge,  and  generally  quartzose  between  the 
mouth  of  the  Gironde  and  that  of  the  Adour." — Memoire  sur  les  Dunes, 
Annales  dcs  Fonts  et  Chaussecs,  t.  vii,  1833,  ler  semestre,  p.  146. 

In  the  dunes  of  Long  Island  and  of  Jutland,  there  are  considerable 
veins  composed  almost  wholly  of  garnet.  For  a  very  full  examination  of 
the  mechanical  and  chemical  composition  of  the  dune  sands  of  Jutland,  sea 
ANDRESEN,  Om  Klitformationen,  p.  110. 


475 

near  Egmond,  they  fonn  a  coarse  calcareous  gravel  very 
largely  distributed  through  the  sand,  while  the  interior  dunes 
between  Haarlem  and  "Warmond  exhibit  no  trace  of  them.  It 
is  yet  undecided  whether  the  presence  or  absence  of  these  frag 
ments  is  determined  by  the  period  of  the  formation  of  the 
dunes,  or  whether  it  depends  on  a  difference  in  the  process  by 
which  different  dunes  have  been  accumulated.  Land  shells, 
such  as  snails,  for  example,  are  found  on  the  surface  of  the 
dunes  in  abundance,  and  many  of  the  shelly  fragments  in 
the  interior  of  the  hillocks  may  be  derived  from  the  same 
source."  * 

J.  G.  Kohl  has  some  poetical  thoughts  upon  the  origin  and 
character  of  the  dune  sands,  which  are  worth  quoting  : 

"  The  sand  was  composed  of  pure  transparent  quartz.  I 
could  not  observe  this  sand  without  the  greatest  admiration. 
If  it  is  the  product  of  the  waves,  breaking  and  crushing  flints 
and  fragments  of  quartz  against  each  other,  it  is  a  result 
which  could  be  brought  about  only  in  the  course  of  countless 
ages.  "We  need  not  lift  ourselves  to  the  stars,  to  their  incal 
culable  magnitudes  and  distances  and  numbers,  in  order  to 
feel  the  giddiness  of  astonishment.  Here,  upon  earth,  in  the 
simple  sand,  we  find  miracle  enough.  Think  of  the  number 
of  sand  grains  contained  in  a  single  dune,  then  of  all  the  dunes 
upon  this  widely  extended  coast — not  to  speak  of  the  innu 
merable  grains  in  the  Arabian,  African,  and  Prussian  deserts 
— this,  of  itself,  is  sufficient  to  overwhelm  a  thoughtful  fancy. 
How  long,  how  many  times  must  the  waves  have  risen  and 
sunk  in  order  to  reduce  these  vast  heaps  to  powder  ! 

"  During  the  whole  time  I  spent  on  this  coast,  I  had  always 
some  sand  in  my  fingers,  was  rubbing  and  rolling  it  about, 
examining  it  on  all  sides,  holding  a  little  shining  grain  on  the 
tip  of  my  finger,  and  thinking  to  myself  how,  in  its  corners, 
its  angles,  its  whole  configuration,  it  might  very  probably 
have  a  history  longer  than  that  of  the  old  German  nation — 
possibly  longer  than  that  of  the  human  race.  "Where  was  the 
original  quartz  crystal,  of  which  this  is  a  fragment,  first 

*  De  Bodem  van  Nederland,  i,  p.  823. 


4:76  SAND    CONCRETIONS    IN   DUNES. 

formed  ?  To  what  was  it  once  fixed  ?  What  power  broke  it 
loose  ?  How  was  it  beaten  smaller  and  ever  smaller  by  the 
waves  ?  They  tossed  it,  for  eeons,  to  and  fro  upon  the  beach, 
rolled  it  up  and  down,  forced  it  to  make  thousands  and  thou 
sands  of  daily  voyages  for  millions  and  millions  of  days.  Then 
the  wind  bore  it  away,  and  used  it  in  building  up  a  dune  ; 
there  it  lay  for  centuries,  packed  in  with  its  fellows,  protecting 
the  marshes  and  cherished  by  the  inhabitants,  till,  seized  again 
by  the  pursuing  sea,  it  fell  once  more  into  the  water,  there  to 
begin  the  endless  dance  anew — and  again  to  be  swept  away  by 
the  wind — and  again  to  find  rest  in  the  dunes,  a  protection 
and  a  blessing  to  the  coast.  There  is  something  mysterious 
about  such  a  grain  of  sand,  and  at  last  I  went  so  far  as  to  fancy 
a  little  immortal  spark  linked  with  each  one,  presiding  over 
its  destiny,  and  sharing  its  vicissitudes.  Could  we  arm  our 
eyes  with  a  microscope,  and  then  dive,  like  a  sparling,  into 
one  of  these  dunes,  the  pile,  which  is  in  fact  only  a  heap  of 
countless  little  ciystal  blocks,  would  strike  us  as  the  most  mar 
vellous  building  upon  earth.  The  sunbeams  would  pass,  with 
illuminating  power,  through  all  these  little  crystalline  bodies. 
We  should  see  how  every  sand  grain  is  formed,  by  what  mul 
tifarious  little  facets  it  is  bounded,  we  should  even  discover 
that  it  is  itself  composed  of  many  distinct  particles."  ' 

Sand  concretions  form  within  the  dunes  and  especially  in 
the  depressions  between  them.  These  are  sometimes  so  exten 
sive  and  impervious  as  to  retain  a  sufficient  supply  of  water  to 
feed  perennial  springs,  and  to  form  small  permanent  ponds, 
and  they  are  a  great  impediment  to  the  penetration  of  roots, 
and  consequently  to  the  growth  of  trees  planted,  or  germinat 
ing  from  self-sown  seeds,  upon  the  dunes.f 

*  J.  G.  KOHL,  Die  Inseln  und  MarscJien  der  HerzogtJiiinier  Scldcswig  und 
Holstein,  ii,  p.  200. 

t  STAKING,  De  Eodem  van  Nedcrland,  i,  p.  317.  See  also,  BKEGSOE, 
Reventlotfs  VirTcsomlied,  ii,  p.  11. 

"In  the  sand-hill  ponds  mentioned  in  the  text,  there  is  a  vigorous 
growth  of  hog  plants  accompanied  with  the  formation  of  peat,  which  goes 
on  regularly  as  long  as  the  dune  sand  does  not  drift.  But  if  the  surface  of 
the  dunes  is  broken,  the  sand  blows  into  the  ponds,  covers  the  peat,  and 


INTERIOR    STRUCTURE    OF   DUNES.  477 

Interior  Structure  of  Dimes. 

The  interior  structure  of  the  dunes,  the  arrangement  of 
their  particles,  is  not,  as  might  be  expected,  that  of  an  unor 
ganized,  confused  heap,  but  they  show  a  strong  tendency  to 
stratification.  This  is  a  point  of  much  geological  interest, 
because  it  indicates  that  sandstone  may  owe  its  stratified  char 
acter  to  the  action  of  wind  as  well  as  of  water.  The  origin 
and  peculiar  character  of  these  layers  are  due  to  a  variety  of 
causes.  A  southwest  wind  and  current  may  deposit  upon  a 
dune  a  stratum  of  a  given  color  and  mineral  composition,  and 
this  may  be  succeeded  by  a  northwest  wind  and  current, 
bringing  with  them  particles  of  a  different  hue,  constitution, 
and  origin. 

Again,  if  we  suppose  a  violent  tempest  to  strew  the  beach 
with  sand  grains  very  different  in  magnitude  and  specific  grav 
ity,  and,  after  the  sand  is  dry,  to  be  succeeded  by  a  gentle 
breeze,  it  is  evident  that  only  the  lighter  particles  will  be 
taken  up  and  carried  to  the  dunes.  If,  after  some  time,  the 
wind  freshens,  heavier  grains  will  be  transported  and  depos 
ited  on  the  former,  and  a  still  stronger  succeeding  gale  will 
roll  up  yet  larger  kernels.  Each  of  these  deposits  will  form  a 
stratum.  If  we  suppose  the  tempest  to  be  followed,  after  the 
sand  is  dry,  not  by  a  gentle  breeze,  but  by  a  wind  powerful 
enough  to  lift  at  the  same  time  particles  of  very  various  mag 
nitudes  and  weights,  the  heaviest  will  often  lodge  on  the  dune 
while  the  lighter  will  be  carried  farther.  This  would  produce 
a  stratum  of  coarse  sand,  and  the  same  effect  might  result  from 
the  blowing  away  of  light  particles  out  of  a  mixed  layer,  while 
the  heavier  remained  undisturbed/-  Still  another  cause  of 

puts  an  end  to  its  formation.  "When,  in  the  course  of  time,  marine  currents 
cut  away  the  coast,  the  dunes  move  landward  and  fill  up  the  ponds,  and 
thus  are  formed  the  remarkable  strata  of  fossile  peat  called  Martorv,  which 
appears  to  be  unknown  to  the  geologists  of  other  parts  of  Europe." — FORCH- 
HAMMEE,  in  LEONHAED  und  BRONX,  1841,  p.  13. 

*  The  lower  strata  must  be  older  than  the  superficial  layer?,  and  the 
particles  which  compose  them  may  in  time  become  more  disiutcgrated,  and 
therefore  finer  than  those  deposited  later  and  above  them. 


4:78  FOEM   OF    DUNES. 

stratification  may  be  found  in  the  occasional  interposition  of  a 
thin  layer  of  leaves  or  other  vegetable  remains  between  succes 
sive  deposits,  and  this  I  imagine  to  be  more  frequent  than  lias 
been  generally  supposed. 

The  eddies  of  strong  winds  between  the  hillocks  must  also 
occasion  disturbances  and  re-arrangements  of  the  sand  layers, 
and  it  seems  possible  that  the  irregular  thickness  and  the 
strange  contortions  of  the  strata  of  the  sandstone  at  Petra 
may  be  due  to  some  such  cause.  A  curious  observation  of 
Professor  Forchhammer  suggests  an  explanation  of  another 
peculiarity  in  the  structure  of  the  sandstone  of  Mount  Seir. 
He  describes  dunes  in  Jutland,  composed  of  yellow  quartzose 
sand  intermixed  with  black  titanian  iron.  When  the  wind 
blows  over  the  surface  of  the  dunes,  it  furrows  the  sand  with 
alternate  ridges  and  depressions,  ripples,  in  short,  like  those  of 
water.  The  swells,  the  dividing  ridges  of  the  system  of  sand 
ripples,  are  composed  of  the  light  grains  of  quartz,  while  the 
heavier  iron  rolls  into  the  depressions  between,  and  thus  the 
whole  surface  of  the  dune  appears  as  if  covered  with  a  fine 
black  network. 

Form  of  Dunes. 

The  sea  side  of  dunes,  being  more  exposed  to  the  caprices 
of  the  wind,  is  more  irregular  in  form  than  the  lee  or  land  side, 
where  the  arrangement  of  the  particles  is  affected  by  fewer 
disturbing  and  conflicting  influences.  Hence,  the  stratification 
of  the  windward  slope  is  somewhat  confused,  while  the  sand  on 
the  lee  side  is  found  to  be  disposed  in  more  regular  beds,  in 
clining  landward,  and  with  the  largest  particles  lowest, 
where  their  greater  weight  would  naturally  carry  them.  The 
lee  side  of  the  dunes,  being  thus  formed  of  sand  deposited 
according  to  the  laws  of  gravity,  is  very  uniform  in  its  slope, 
which,  according  to  Forchhammer,  varies  little  from  an  angle 
of  30°  with  the  horizon,  while  the  more  exposed  and  irregular 
weather  side  lies  at  an  inclination  of  from  5°  to  10°.  When, 
however,  the  outer  tier  of  dunes  is  formed  so  near  the  water- 
line  as  to  be  exposed  to  the  immediate  action  of  the  waves,  it 


GEOLOGICAL   IMPORTANCE   OF   DUNES.  470 

is  undermined,  and  the  face  of  the  hill  is  very  steep  and  some 
times  nearly  perpendicular. 

Geological  Importance  of  Dunes. 

These  observations,  and  other  facts  which  a  more  attentive 
study  on  the  spot  would  detect,  might  furnish  the  means  of 
determining  interesting  and  important  questions  concerning 
geological  formations  in  localities  very  unlike  those  where 
dunes  are  now  thrown  up.  For  example,  Studer  supposes  that 
the  drifting  sand  hills  of  the  African  desert  were  originally 
coast  dunes,  and  that  they  have  been  transported  to  their  pres 
ent  position  far  in  the  interior,  by  the  rolling  and  shifting  lee 
ward  movement  to  which  all  dunes  not  covered  with  vegeta 
tion  are  subject.  The  present  general  drift  of  the  sands  of  that 
desert  appears  to  be  to  the  southwest  and  west,  the  prevailing 
winds  blowing  from  the  northeast  and  east ;  but  it  has  been 
doubted  whether  the  shoals  of  the  western  coast  of  Northern 
Africa,  and  the  sands  upon  that  shore,  are  derived  from  the 
bottom  of  the  Atlantic,  in  the  usual  manner,  or,  by  an  inverse 
process,  from  those  of  the  Sahara.  The  latter,  as  has  been 
before  remarked,  is  probably  the  truth,  though  observations 
are  wanting  to  decide  the  question.*  There  is  nothing  vio 
lently  improbable  in  the  supposition  that  they  may  have  been 
first  thrown  up  by  the  Mediterranean  on  its  Libyan  coast,  and 
thence  blown  south  and  west  over  the  vast  space  they  now 
cover.  But  whatever  has  been  their  source  and  movement, 
they  can  hardly  fail  to  have  left  on  their  route  some  sandstone 
monuments  to  mark  their  progress,  such,  for  example,  as  we 
have  seen  are  formed  from  the  dune  sand  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Nile ;  and  it  is  conceivable  that  the  character  of  the  drifting 
sands  themselves,  and  of  the  conglomerates  and  sandstones  to 
whose  formation  they  have  contributed,  might  furnish  satisfac- 

*  "  On  the  west  coast  of  Africa  tlie  dunes  are  drifting  seawards,  and 
always  receiving  new  accessions  from  the  Sahara.  They  are  constantly 
advancing  out  into  the  sea."  See  ante,  p.  16,  note. — NAUMANN,  Geognosie, 
ii,  p.  1172.  See  Appendix,  No.  . 


480  GEOLOGICAL  IMPORTANCE  OF  DUNES. 

tory  evidence  as  to  their  origin,  their  starting  point,  and  the 
course  by  which  they  have  wandered  so  far  from  the  sea/* 

If  the  sand  of  coast  dunes  is,  as  Staring  describes  it,  com 
posed  chiefly  of  well-rounded  quartzose  grains,  fragments  of 
shells,  and  other  constant  ingredients,  it  would  often  be  recog 
nizable  as  coast  sand,  in  its  agglutinate  state  of  sandstone. 
The  texture  of  this  rock  varies  from  an  almost  imperceptible 
fineness  of  grain  to  great  coarseness,  and  affords  good  facilities 
for  microscopic  observation  of  its  structure.  There  are  sand 
stones,  such,  for  example,  as  are  used  for  grindstones,  where 
the  grit,  as  it  is  called,  is  of  exceeding  sharpness  ;  others  where 
the  angles  of  the  grains  are  so  obtuse  that  they  scarcely  act  at 
all  on  hard  metals.  The  former  may  be  composed  of  grains 
of  rock,  disintegrated  indeed,  and  recemeiited  together,  but 
not,  in  the  meanwhile,  much  rolled  ;  the  latter,  of  sands  long 
washed  by  the  sea,  and  drifted  by  land  winds.  There  is, 

*  Forchhammer,  after  pointing  out  the  coincidence  between  the  in 
clined  stratification  of  dunes  and  the  structure  of  ancient  tilted  rocks, 
says  :  "  But  I  am  not  able  to  point  out  a  sandstone  formation  correspond 
ing  to  the  dunes.  Probably  most  ancient  dunes  have  been  destroyed  by 
submersion  before  the  loose  sand  became  cemented  to  solid  stone,  but  we 
may  suppose  that  circumstances  have  existed  somewhere  which  have  pre 
served  the  characteristics  of  this  formation." — LEONHARD  und  BKONX, 
1841,  p.  8,  9. 

Such  formations,  however,  certainly  exist.  I  find  from  Laurent  (He- 
moire  sur  le  Sahara,  etc.,  p.  12),  that  in  the  Algerian  desert  there  exist 
"sandstone  formations  "  not  only  "corresponding  to  the  dunes,"  but  ac 
tually  consolidated  within  them.  "A  place  called  El-Mouia-Tadjer  pre 
sents  a  repetition  of  what  we  saw  at  El-Baya ;  one  of  the  funnels  formed 
in  the  middle  of  the  dunes  contains  wells  from  two  metres  to  two  and  a 
half  in  depth,  dug  in  a  sand  which  pressure,  and  probably  the  presence  of 
certain  palts,  have  cemented  so  as  to  form  true  sandstone,  soft  indeed,  but 
which  does  not  yield  except  to  the  pickaxe.  These  sandstones  exhibit  an 
inclination  which  seems  to  be  the  effect  of  wind ;  for  they  conform  to  the 
direction  of  the  sands  which  roll  down  a  scarp  occasioned  by  the  primi 
tive  obstacle."  See  Appendix,  No.  57. 

The  dunes  near  the  month  of  the  Nile,  the  lower  sands  of  which  have 
been  cemented  together  by  the  infiltration  of  Nile  water,  would  probably 
show  a  similar  stratification  in  the  sandstone  which  now  forms  their  base. 


GEOLOGICAL  IMPORTANCE  OF  DUNES.  481 

indeed,  so  much  resemblance  between  the  effects  of  driving 
winds  and  of  rolling  water  upon  light  bodies,  that  there  would 
be  difficulty  in  distinguishing  them  ;  *  but  after  all,  it  is  not 
probable  that  sandstone,  composed  of  grains  thrown  up  from 
the  salt  sea,  and  long  tossed  by  the  winds,  would  be  identical 
in  its  structure  with  that  formed  from  fragments  of  rock- 
crushed  by  mechanical  force,  or  disintegrated  by  heat,  and 
again  agglutinated  without  much  exposure  to  the  action  of 
moving  water.f 

*  Forclihammer  ascribes  the  resemblance  between  the  furrowing  of  the 
dune  sands  and  the  beach  ripples,  not  to  the  similarity  of  the  effect  of  wind 
and  water  upon  sand,  but  wholly  to  the  action  of  the  former  fluid ;  in  the 
first  instance,  directly,  in  the  latter,  through  the  water.  "  The  wind  rip 
ples  on  the  surface  of  the  dunes  precisely  resemble  the  water  ripples  of 
sand  flats  occasionally  overflowed  by  the  sea ;  and  with  the  closest  scrutiny, 
I  have  never  been  able  to  detect  the  slightest  difference  between  them. 
This  is  easily  explained  by  the  fact,  that  the  water  ripples  are  produced  by 
the  action  of  light  wind  on  tbe  water  which  only  transmits  the  air  waves 
to  the  sand." — LEOXIIARD  und  BROXX,  1841,  pp.  7,  8. 

t  American  observers  do  not  agree  in  their  descriptions  of  the  form  and 
character  of  the  sand  grains  which  compose  the  interior  dunes  of  the  North 
American  desert.  0.  C.  Parry,  geologist  to  the  Mexican  Boundary  Com 
mission,  in  describing  the  dunes  near  the  station  at  a  spring  thirty-two 
miles  west  from  the  Rio  Grande  at  El  Paso,  says:  "The  separate  grains 
of  the  sand  composing  the  sand  hills  are  seen  under  a  lens  to  be  angular,  and 
not  rounded,  as  would  be  the  case  in  regular  beach  deposits." —  U.  S.  Mexican 
Boundary  Survey,  Report  of,  vol.  i,  Geological  Report  of  C.  C.  Parry,  p.  10. 

In  the  general  description  of  the  country  traversed,  same  volume,  p. 
47,  Colonel  Emory  says  that  on  an  "  examination  of  the  sand  with  a 
microscope  of  sufficient  power,"  the  grains  are  seen  to  be  angular,  not 
rounded  by  rolling  in  water. 

On  the  other  hand,  Blake,  in  Geological  Report,  Pacific  Railroad  Rep., 
vol.  v,  p.  119,  observes  that  the  grains  of  the  dune  sand,  consisting  of 
quartz,  chalcedony,  carnelian,  agate,  rose  quartz,  and  probably  chrysolite, 
were  much  rounded ;  and  on  page  241,  he  says  that  many  of  the  sand  grains 
of  the  Colorado  desert  are  perfect  spheres. 

On  page  20  of  a  report  in  vol.  ii  of  the  Pacific  Railroad  Report,  by  the 
same  observer,  it  is  said  that  an  examination  of  dune  sands  brought  from 
the  Llano  Estacado  by  Captain  Pope,  showed  the  grains  to  be  "much 
rounded  by  attrition." 

The  sands  described  by  Mr.  Parry  and  Colonel  Emory  are  not  from  the 


182  INLAND   DUNES. 

Inland  Dunes. 

I  have  met  with  some  observations  indicating  a  structural 
difference  between  interior  and  coast  dunes,  which  might  per 
haps  be  recognized  in  the  sandstones  formed  from  these  two 
species  of  sand  hills  respectively.  In  the  great  American  des 
ert  between  the  Andes  and  the  Pacific,  Meyen  found  sand 
heaps  of  a  perfect  falciform  shape.*  They  were  from  seven 
to  fifteen  feet  high,  the  chord  of  their  arc  measuring  from  twenty 
to  seventy  paces.  The  slope  of  the  convex  face  is  described  as 
very  small,  that  of  the  concave  as  high  as  70°  or  80°,  and  their 
surfaces  were  rippled.  !N~o  smaller  dunes  were  observed,  nor 
any  in  the  process  of  formation.  The  concave  side  uniformly 
faced  the  northwest,  except  toward  the  centre  of  the  desert, 
where,  for  a  distance  of  one  or  two  hundred  paces,  they  grad 
ually  opened  to  the  west,  and  then  again  gradually  resumed  the 
former  position. 

Poppig  ascribes  a  falciform  shape  to  the  movable,  a  conical 
to  the  fixed  dunes,  or  medanos,  of  the  same  desert.  "  The  me- 
danos,"  he  observes,  "  are  hillock-like  elevations  of  sand,  some 
having  a  firm,  others  a  loose  base.  The  former  [latter],  which 
are  always  crescent  shaped,  are  from  ten  to  twenty  feet  high, 
and  have  an  acute  crest.  The  inner  side  is  perpendicular,  and 
the  outer  or  bow  side  forms  an  angle  with  a  steep  inclination 
downward.  When  driven  by  violent  winds,  the  medanos  pass 
rapidly  over  the  plains.  The  smaller  and  lighter  ones  move 
quickly  forward,  before  the  larger  ;  but  the  latter  soon  overtake 
and  crush  them,  whilst  they  are  themselves  shivered  by  the 
collision.  These  medanos  assume  all  sorts  of  extraordinary 
figures,  and  sometimes  move  along  the  plain  in  rows  forming 

same  localities  as  those  examined  by  Mr.  Blake,  and  the  difference  in  their 
character  may  denote  a  difference  of  origin  or  of  age. 

*  LAURENT  (Memoire  sur  le  Sahara,  pp.  11,  12,  and  elsewhere)  speaks 
of  a  funnel-shaped  depression  at  a  high  point  in  the  dunes,  as  a  character 
istic  feature  of  the  sand  hills  of  the  Algerian  desert.  This  seems  to  be  an 
approximation  to  the  crescent  form  noticed  by  Meyen  and  Poppig  in  the 
inland  dunes  of  Peru. 


INLAND   DUNES.  483 

most  intricate  labyrinths.  *  *  A  plain  often  appears  to  be 
covered  with  a  row  of  medanos,  and  some  days  afterward  it 
is  again  restored  to  its  level  and  uniform  aspect.  *  *  * 

"  The  medanos  with  immovable  bases  are  formed  on  the 
blocks  of  rocks  which  are  scattered  about  the  plain.  The  sand 
is  driven  against  them  by  the  wind,  and  as  soon  as  it  reaches 
the  top  point,  it  descends  on  the  other  side  until  that  is  likewise 
covered  ;  thus  gradually  arises  a  conical-formed  hill.  Entire 
hillock  chains  with  acute  crests  are  formed  in  a  similar  manner. 
*  *  *  On  their  southern  declivities  are  found  vast  masses 
of  sand,  drifted  thither  by  the  mid-day  gales.  The  northern 
declivity,  though  not  steeper  than  the  southern,  is  only  spar 
ingly  covered  with  sand.  If  a  hillock  chain  somewhat  distant 
from  the  sea  extends  in  a  line  parallel  with  the  Andes,  namely, 
from  S.  S.  E.  to  X.  N.  "W".,  the  western  declivity  is  almost  en 
tirely  free  of  sand,  as  it  is  driven  to  the  plain  below  by  the 
southeast  wind,  which  constantly  alternates  with  the  wind  from 
the  south."  * 

It  is  difficult  to  reconcile  this  description  with  that  of  Meyen, 
but  if  confidence  is  to  be  reposed  in  the  accuracy  of  either 
observer,  the  formation  of  the  sand  hills  in  question  must  be 
governed  by  very  different  laws  from  those  which  determine 
the  structure  of  coast  dunes.  Captain  Gilliss,  of  the  American 
navy,  found  the  sand  hills  of  the  Peruvian  desert  to  be  in  gen 
eral  crescent  shaped,  as  described  by  Meyen,  and  a  similar 
structure  is  said  to  characterize  the  inland  dunes  of  the  Llano 
Estacado  and  other  plateaus  of  the  Korth  American  desert, 
though  these  latter  are  of  greater  height  and  other  dimensions 
than  those  described  by  Meyen.  There  is  no  very  obvious  ex 
planation  of  this  difference  in  form  between  maritime  and 
inland  sand  hills,  and  the  subject  merits  investigation. f 

*  Travels  in  Peru,  New  York,  1848,  chap.  ix. 

t  Notwithstanding  the  general  tendency  of  isolated  coast  dunes  and 
of  the  peaks  of  the  sand  ridges  to  assume  a  conical  form,  Andresen  states 
that  the  hills  of  the  inner  or  landward  rows  are  sometimes  ~bow-shaped) 
and  sometimes  undulating  in  outline. — Om  Elitformationen,  p.  84.  Ho 
says  further  that :  "Before  an  obstruction,  two  or  three  feet  high  and  con- 


484  AGE   OF   THE  DUNES. 


Age,  Character,  and  Permanence  of  Dunes. 

The  origin  of  most  great  lines  of  dunes  goes  back  past  all 
history.  There  are  on  many  coasts,  several  distinct  ranges  of 
sand  hills  which  seem  to  be  of  very  different  ages,  and  to  have 
been  formed  under  different  relative  conditions  of  land  and 
water.*  In  some  cases,  there  has  been  an  upheaval  of  the  coast 

siderably  longer,  lying  perpendicularly  to  the  direction  of  the  wind,  the 
sand  is  deposited  with  a  windward  angle  of  from  6°  to  12°,  and  the  bank 
presents  a  concave  face  to  the  wind,  while,  behind  the  obstruction,  the 
outline  is  convex ; "  and  he  lays  it  down  as  a  general  rule,  that  a  slope, 
from  which  sand  is  blown,  is  left  with  a  concavity  of  about  one  inch  of 
depth  to  four  feet  of  distance  ;  a  slope,  upon  which  sand  is  dropped  by  the 
wind,  is  convex.  It  appears  from  Andresen's  figures,  however,  that  the 
concavity  and  convexity  referred  to,  apply,  not  to  the  horizontal  longi 
tudinal  section  of  the  sand  bank,  as  his  language  unexplained  by  the 
drawings  might  be  supposed  to  mean,  but  to  the  vertical  cross-section,  and 
hence  the  dunes  he  describes,  with  the  exception  above  noted,  do  not  cor 
respond  to  those  of  the  American  deserts. —  Om  Klitformationen,  p.  86. 

The  dunes  of  Gascony,  which  sometimes  exceed  three  hundred  feet  in 
height,  present  the  same  concavity  and  convexity  of  vertical  cross-section. 
The  slopes  of  these  dunes  are  much  steeper  than  those  of  the  Netherlands 
and  the  Danish  coast ;  for  while  all  observers  agree  in  assigning  to  the  sea 
ward  and  landward  faces  of  these  latter,  respectively,  angles  of  from  5° 
to  12°,  and  30°  with  the  horizon,  the  corresponding  faces  of  the  dunes 
of  Gascony  present  angles  of  from  10°  to  25°,  and  50°  to  60°.— LAVAL, 
Memoire  sur  les  Dunes  de  Gascogne,  Annales  des  Fonts  et  Chaussecs,  1847, 
2me  semestre. 

*  KrauseT  speaking  of  the  dunes  on  the  coast  of  Prussia,  says :  "  Their 
origin  belongs  to  three  different  periods,  in  which  important  changes  in 
the  relative  level  of  sea  and  land  have  unquestionably  taken  place.  *  *  * 
Except  in  the  deep  depressions  between  them,  the  dunes  are  everywhere 
sprinkled,  to  a  considerable  height,  with  brown  oxydulated  iron,  which  has 
penetrated  into  the  sand  to  the  depth  of  from  three  to  eighteen  inches,  and 
colored  it  red.  *  *  *  Above  the  iron  is  a  stratum  of  sand  differing  in 
composition  from  ordinary  sea  sand,  and  on  this,  growing  woods  are  always 
found.  *  *  *  The  gradually  accumulated  forest  soil  occurs  in  beds  of 
from  one  to  three  feet  thick,  and  changes,  proceeding  upward,  from  gray 
sand  to  black  humus."  Even  on  the  third  or  seaward  range,  the  sand 
grasses  appear  and  thrive  luxuriantly,  at  least  on  the  west  coast,  though 
Krause  doubts  whether  the  dunes  of  the  east  coast  were  ever  thus  pro 
tected. — Per  Duneiibau.  pp.  8,  11. 


NAKEDNESS    OF   DUNEL.  485 

line  since  the  formation  of  the  oldest  hillocks,  and  these  have 
become  inland  dimes,  while  younger  rows  have  been  thrown 
up  on  the  new  beach  laid  bare  by  elevation  of  the  sea  bed. 
Our  knowledge  of  the  mode  of  their  first  accumulation  is  de 
rived  from  observation  of  the  action  of  wind  and  water  in  the 
few  instances  where,  with  or  without  the  aid  of  man,  new 
coast  dunes  have  been  accumulated,  and  of  the  influence  of 
wind  alone  in  elevating  new  sand  heaps  inland  of  the  coast 
tier,  when  the  outer  rows  are  destroyed  by  the  sea,  as  also 
when  the  sodded  surface  of  ancient  sands  has  been  broken,  and 
the  subjacent  strata  laid  open  to  the  air. 

It  is  a  question  of  much  interest,  in  what  degree  the  naked 
condition  of  most  dunes  is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  improvidence 
and  indiscretion  of  man.  There  are,  in  Western  France,  ex 
tensive  ranges  of  dunes  covered  with  ancient  and  dense  forests, 
while  the  recently  formed  sand  hills  between  them  and  the  sea 
are  bare  of  vegetation,  and  are  rapidly  advancing  upon  the 
wrooded  dunes,  which  they  threaten  to  bury  beneath  their 
drifts.  Between  the  old  dunes  and  the  new,  there  is  no  dis 
coverable  difference  in  material  or  in  structure ;  but  the  modern 
sand  hills  are  naked  and  shifting,  the  ancient,  clothed  with 
vegetation  and  fixed.  It  has  been  conjectured  that  artificial 
methods  of  confinement  and  plantation  were  employed  by  the 
primitive  inhabitants  of  Gaul ;  and  Laval,  basing  his  calcula 
tions  on  the  rate  of  annual  movement  of  the  shifting  dunes, 
assigns  the  fifth  century  of  the  Christian  era  as  the  period  when 
these  processes  were  abandoned.* 

There  is  no  historical  evidence  that  the  Gauls  were  ac 
quainted  with  artificial  methods  of  fixing  the  sands  of  the 
coast,  and  we  have  little  reason  to  suppose  that  they  were  ad 
vanced  enough  in  civilization  to  be  likely  to  resort  to  such 
processes,  especially  at  a  period  when  land  could  have  had  but 
a  moderate  value. 

*  LAVAL,  Mcmoire  sur  les  Dunes  de  Gascogne,  Annales  des  Ponts  et 
ChauMees,  1847,  2me  semestre,  p.  231.  The  same  opinion  had  been  ex 
pressed  by  BEEMONTIER.  Annales  des  Ponts  et  Chaussees,  1833,  ler  semestro, 
p.  185. 


4:86  DUNES  NATUEALLY  WOODED. 

In  other  countries,  dunes  have  spontaneously  clotlied  them- 
selves  with  forests,  and  the  rapidity  with  which  their  surface 
is  covered  by  various  species  of  sand  plants,  and  finally  by 
trees,  where  man  and  cattle  and  burrowing  animals  are  ex 
cluded  from  them,  renders  it  highly  probable  that  they  would, 
as  a  general  rule,  protect  themselves,  if  left  to  the  undisturbed 
action  of  natural  causes.  The  sand  hills  of  the  Frische  Keh- 
ruiig,  on  the  coast  of  Prussia,  were  formerly  wooded  down  to 
the  water's  edge,  and  it  was  only  in  the  last  century  that,  in 
consequence  of  the  destruction  of  their  forests,  they  became 
moving  sands.*  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
dunes  of  the  Netherlands  were  clothed  with  trees  until  after 
the  Roman  invasion.  The  old  geographers,  in  describing  these 
countries,  speak  of  vast  forests  extending  to  the  very  brink  of 
the  sea ;  but  drifting  coast  dunes  are  first  mentioned  by  the 
chroniclers  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  so  far  as  we  know  they 
have  assumed  a  destructive  character  in  consequence  of  the 
improvidence  of  man.f  The  history  of  the  dunes  of  Michigan, 

*  "  In  the  Middle  Ages,"  says  "Willibald  Alexis,  as  quoted  by  Mftller, 
Das  Bucli  der Pflanzenwelt  i,  p.  16,  "the  Nehrung  was  extending  itself 
further,  and  the  narrow  opening  near  Lochstadt  had  filled  itself  up  with 
sand.  A  great  pine  forest  bound  with  its  roots  the  dune  sand  and  the 
heath  uninterruptedly  from  Danzig  to  Pillau.  King  Frederick  William  I 
was  once  in  want  of  money.  A  certain  Ilerr  von  Korff  promised  to  pro 
cure  it  for  him,  without  loan  or  taxes,  if  he  could  be  allowed  to  remove 
something  quite  useless.  He  thinned  out  the  forests  of  Prussia,  which 
then,  indeed,  possessed  little  pecuniary  value ;  but  he  felled  the  entire 
woods  of  the  Frische  Nehrung,  so  far  as  they  lay  within  the  Prussian  ter 
ritory.  The  financial  operation  was  a  success.  The  king  had  money,  but 
in  the  elementary  operation  which  resulted  from  it,  the  state  received  irrep 
arable  injury.  The  sea  winds  rush  over  the  bared  hills ;  the  Frische  Haflf 
is  half-choked  with  sand ;  the  channel  between  Elbing,  the  sea,  and  Konigs- 
berg  is  endangered,  and  the  fisheries  in  the  Half  injured.  The  operation 
of  Herr  von  Korff  brought  the  king  200,000  thalers.  The  state  would 
now  willingly  expend  millions  to  restore  the  forests  again." 

t  STAKING,  Voormaals  en  Tham,  p.  231.  Had  the  dunes  of  the  Nether 
landish  and  French  coasts,  at  the  period  of  the  Roman  invasion,  resembled 
the  moving  sand  hills  of  the  present  day,  it  is  inconceivable  that  they 
could  have  escaped  the  notice  of  so  acute  a  physical  geographer  as  Strabo ; 


PERMANENCE   OF   DUNES.  487 

go  far  as  I  liave  been  able  to  learn  from  my  own  observation, 
01  that  of  others,  is  the  same.  Thirty  years  ago,  when  that 
region  was  scarcely  inhabited,  they  were  generally  covered 
with  a  thick  growth  of  trees,  chiefly  pines,  and  underwood,  and 
there  was  little  appearance  of  undermining  and  wash  on  the 
lake  side,  or  of  shifting  of  the  sands,  except  where  the  trees 
had  been  cut  or  turned  up  by  the  roots.* 

Nature,  as  she  builds  up  dunes  for  the  protection  of  the  sea 
shore,  provides,  with  similar  conservatism,  for  the  preservation 
of  the  dunes  themselves ;  so  that,  without  the  interference  of 
man,  these  hillocks  would  be,  not  perhaps  absolutely  perpetual, 
but  very  lasting  in  duration,  and  very  slowly  altered  in  form  or 
position.  When  once  covered  with  the  trees,  shrubs,  and  her 
baceous  growths  adapted  to  such  localities,  dunes  undergo  no 
apparent  change,  except  the  slow  occasional  undermining  of 

and  the  absolute  silence  of  Caesar,  Ptolemy,  and  the  encyclopaedic  Pliny, 
respecting  them,  would  be  not  less  inexplicable. 

The  Old  Northern  language,  the  ancient  tongue  of  Denmark,  though 
rich  in  terms  descriptive  of  natural  scenery,  had  no  name  for  dune,  nor  do 
I  think  the  sand  hills  of  the  coast  are  anywhere  noticed  in  Icelandic  liter 
ature.  The  modern  Icelanders,  in  treating  of  the  dunes  of  Jutland,  call 
them  klcttr,  hill,  cliff,  and  the  Danish  Tdit  is  from  that  source.  The  word 
Diine  is  also  of  recent  introduction  into  German.  Had  the  dunes  been 
distinguished  from  other  hillocks,  in  ancient  times,  by  so  remarkable  a 
feature  as  the  propensity  to  drift,  they  would  certainly  have  acquired  a 
specific  name  in  both  Old  Northern  and  German.  So  long  as  they  were 
wooded  knolls,  they  needed  no  peculiar  name;  when  they  became  for 
midable,  from  the  destruction  of  the  woods  which  confined  them,  they 
acquired  a  designation. 

*  The  sands  of  Capo  Cod  were  partially,  if  not  completely,  covered 
with  vegetation  by  nature.  Dr.  Dwight,  describing  the  dunes  as  they 
were  in  1800,  says  :  "  Some  of  them  are  covered  with  beach  grass  ;  somo 
fringed  with  whortleberry  bushes  ;  and  some  tufted  with  a  small  and  sin 
gular  growth  of  oaks.  *  *  *  The  parts  of  this  barrier,  which  are  cov 
ered  with  whortleberry  bushes  and.  with  oaks,  have  been  either  not  at  all, 
or  very  little  blown.  The  oaks,  particularly,  appear  to  be  the  continuation 
of  the  forests  originally  formed  on  this  spot.  *  *  *  They  wore  all  t'ie 
marks  of  extreme  age ;  were,  in  some  instances,  already  decayed,  and  in 
others  decaying  ;  were  hoary  with  moss,  and  were  deformed  by  branches, 
broken  and  wasted,  not  by  violence,  but  by  time." — Travels,  iii,  p.  91. 


488  MANAGEMENT  OF  DUNES. 

the  outer  tier,  and  accidental  destruction  by  the  exposure  of 
the  interior,  from  the  burrowing  of  animals,  or  the  upturning 
of  trees  with  their  roots,  and  all  these  causes  of  displacement 
are  very  much  less  destructive  when  a  vegetable  covering  ex 
ists  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the  breach. 

Before  the  occupation  of  the  coasts  by  civilized  and  there 
fore  destructive  man,  dunes,  at  all  points  where  they  have  been 
observed,  seem  to  have  been  protected  in  their  rear  by  forests, 
which  served  to  break  the  force  of  the  winds  in  both  directions,* 
and  to  have  spontaneously  clothed  themselves  with  a  dense 
growth  of  the  various  plants,  grasses,  shrubs,  and  trees,  which 
nature  has  assigned  to  such  soils.  It  is  observed  in  Europe 
that  dunes,  though  now  without  the  shelter  of  a  forest  country 
behind  them,  begin  to  protect  themselves  as  soon  as  human 
trespassers  are  excluded,  and  grazing  animals  denied  access  to 
them.  Herbaceous  and  arborescent  plants  spring  up  almost  at 
once,  first  in  the  depressions,  and  then  upon  the  surface  of  the 
sand  hills,  Every  seed  that  sprouts,  binds  together  a  certain 
amount  of  sand  by  its  roots,  shades  a  little  ground  with  its 
leaves,  and  furnishes  food  and  shelter  for  still  younger  or 
smaller  growths.  A  succession  of  a  very  few  favorable  seasons 
suffices  to  bind  the  whole  surface  together  with  a  vegetable 
network,  and  the  power  of  resistance  possessed  by  the  dunes 
themselves,  and  the  protection  they  afford  to  the  fields  behind 
them,  are  just  in  proportion  to  the  abundance  and  density  of 
the  plants  they  support. 

The  growth  of  the  vegetable  covering  can,  of  course,  be 
much  accelerated  by  judicious  planting  and  watchful  care,  and 
this  species  of  improvement  is  now  carried  on  upon  a  vast 
scale,  wherever  the  value  of  land  is  considerable  and  the  popu 
lation  dense.  In  the  main,  the  dunes  on  the  coast  of  the 
German  Sea,  notwithstanding  the  great  quantity  of  often  fertile 

*  Bergsoe  (Reventlovs  VirksomTied,  ii,  3)  states  that  the  dunes  on  the 
west  coast  of  Jutland  were  stationary  before  the  destruction  of  the  forests 
to  the  east  of  them.  The  felling  of  the  tall  trees  removed  the  resistance 
to  the  lower  currents  of  the  westerly  winds,  and  the  sands  have  since 
buried  a  great  extent  of  ferti]e  soil.  See  also  same  work,  ii,  p.  124. 


USE   OF   DUNES.  489 

land  they  cover,  and  the  evils  which  result  from  their  move 
ment,  are,  upon  the  whole,  a  protective  and  beneficial  agent, 
and  their  maintenance  is  an.  object  of  solicitude  with  the  gov 
ernments  and  people  of  the  shores  they  protect.* 

Use  of  Dimes  as  a  Barrier  against  the  Sea. 

Although  the  sea  throws  up  large  quantities  of  sand  on  flat 
lee-shores,  there  are,  as  we  have  seen,  many  cases  where  it 
continually  encroaches  on  those  same  shores  and  washes  them 
away.  At  all  points  of  the  shallow  North  Sea  where  the 
agitation  of  the  waves  extends  to  the  bottom,  banks  are  form 
ing  and  rolling  eastward.  Hence  the  sea  sand  tends  to  accu 
mulate  upon  the  coast  of  Schleswig-IIolstem  and  Jutland,  and 
were  there  no  conflicting  influences,  the  shore  would  rapidly 
extend  itself  westward.  But  the  same  waves  which  wash 
the  sand  to  the  coast  undermine  the  beach  they  cover,  and  still 
more  rapidly  degrade  the  shore  at  points  where  it  is  too  high 
to  receive  partial  protection  by  the  formation  of  dunes  upon 
it.  The  earth  of  the  coast  is  generally  composed  of  particles 
finer,  lighter,  and  more  transportable  by  water  than  the  sea 
sand.  While,  therefore,  the  billows  raised  by  a  heavy  west 
wind  may  roll  up  and  deposit  along  the  beach  thousands  of 
tons  of  sand,  the  same  waves  may  swallow  up  even  a  larger 
quantity  of  fine  shore  earth.  This  earth,  with  a  portion  of  the 
sand,  is  swept  off  by  northwardly  and  southwardly  currents, 
and  let  fall  at  other  points  of  the  coast,  or  carried  off,  altogether, 

:  "  We  must",  therefore,  not  be  surprised  to  see  the  people  here  deal  as 
gingerly  with  their  dunes,  as  if  treading  among  eggs.  He  who  is  lucky 
enough  to  own  a  molehill  of  dune  pets  it  affectionately,  and  spends  his 
substance  in  cherishing  and  fattening  it.  That  fair,  fertile,  rich  province, 
the  peninsula  of  Eiderstadt  in  the  south  of  Friesland,  has,  on  the  point 
toward  the  sea,  only  a  tiny  row  of  dunes,  some  six  miles  long  or  so  ;  but 
the  people  talk  of  their  fringe  of  sand  hills  as  if  it  were  a  border  set  with 
pearls.  They  look  upon  it  as  their  best  defence  against  Neptune.  They 
have  connected  it  with  their  system  of  dikes,  and  for  years  have  kept  sen 
tries  posted  to  protect  it  against  wanton  injury." — J.  G.  KOHL,  Die  Inseln 
M.  Marscheu  ScJileswlg-IIoUteins.  ii,  p.  115. 


490  ENCROACHMENTS    OF   THE   SEA. 

out  of  the  reach  of  causes  which  might  bring  it  back  to  its 
former  position. 

Although,  then,  the  eastern  shore  of  the  German  Ocean 
here  and  there  advances  into  the  sea,  it  in  general  retreats 
before  it,  and  but  for  the  protection  afforded  it  by  natural 
arrangements  seconded  by  the  art  and  industry  of  man,  whole 
provinces  would  soon  be  engulfed  by  the  waters.  This  pro 
tection  consists  in  an  almost  unbroken  chain  of  sand  banks  and 
dunes,  extending  from  the  northernmost  point  of  Jutland  to 
the  Elbe,  a  distance  of  not  much  less  than  three  hundred  miles, 
and  from  the  Elbe  again,  though  with  more  frequent  and  wider 
interruptions,  to  the  Atlantic  borders  of  France  and  Spain. * 
So  long  as  the  dunes  are  maintained  by  nature  or  by  human 
art,  they  serve,  like  any  other  embankment  or  dike,  as  a  partial 
or  a  complete  protection  against  the  encroachments  of  the  sea ; 
and  on  the  other  hand,  when  their  drifts  are  not  checked  by 
natural  processes,  or  by  the  industry  of  man,  they  become  a 
cause  of  as  certain,  if  not  of  as  sudden,  destruction  as  the 
ocean  itself  whose  advance  they  retard. 

Encroachments  of  the  Sea. 

The  eastward  progress  of  the  sea  on  the  Danish  and  Nether 
landish  coast,  and  on  certain  shores  of  the  Atlantic,  depends  so 
much  on  local  geological  structure,  on  the  force  and  direction 
of  tidal  and  other  marine  currents,  on  the  volume  and  rapidity 
of  coast  rivers,  on  the  contingencies  of  the  weather  and  on 
other  varying  circumstances,  that  no  general  rate  can  be  as 
signed  to  it. 

*  Sand  banks  sometimes  connect  themselves  with  the  coast  at  both 
ends,  and  thus  cut  off  a  portion  of  the  sea.  In  this  case,  as  well  as  when 
salt  water  is  enclosed  by  sea  dikes,  the  water  thus  separated  from  the 
ocean  gradually  becomes  fresh,  or  at  least  brackish.  The  Hafts,  or  large 
expanses  of  fresh  water  in  Eastern  Prussia — which  are  divided  from  the 
Baltic  by  narrow  sand  banks  called  Nehrungen,  or,  at  sheltered  points  of 
the  coast,  by  fluviatile  deposits  called  Werders — all  have  one  or  more  open 
passages,  through  which  the  water  of  the  rivers  that  supply  them  at  last 
finds  its  way  to  the  sea. 


THE   LIIMFJORD.  491 

At  Agger,  near  the  western  end  of  the  Liimfjord,  in  Jut 
land,  the  coast  was  washed  away,  between  the  years  1815  and 
1839,  at  the  rate  of  more  than  eighteen  feet  a  year.  The  ad 
vance  of  the  sea  appears  to  have  been  something  less  rapid 
for  a  century  before;  but  from  1840  to  185T,  it  gained  upon 
the  land  no  less  than  thirty  feet  a  year.  At  other  points  of 
the  shore  of  Jutland,  the  loss  is  smaller,  but  the  sea  is  encroach 
ing  generally  upon  the  whole  line  of  the  coast.* 

The  Liimfjord. 

The  irruption  of  the  sea  into  the  fresh-water  lagoon  of 
Liimfjord  in  Jutland,  in  1825 — one  of  the  most  remarkable 
encroachments  of  the  ocean  in  modern  times — is  expressly  as 
cribed  to  "  mismanagement  of  the  dunes  "  on  the  narrow  neck 
of  land  which  separated  the  fjord  from  the  North  Sea.  At 
earlier  periods,  the  sea  had  swept  across  the  isthmus,  and  even 
burst  through  it,  but  the  channel  had  been  filled  up  again, 
sometimes  by  artificial  means,  sometimes  by  the  operation  of 
natural  causes,  and  on  all  these  occasions  effects  were  produced 
very  similar  to  those  resulting  from  the  formation  of  the  new 
channel  in  1825,  which  still  remains  open.f  Within  compara 
tively  recent  historical  ages,  the  Liimfjord  has  thus  been  several 
times  alternately  filled  with  fresh  and  with  salt  water,  and  man 
has  produced,  by  neglecting  the  dunes,  or  at  least  might  have 
prevented  by  maintaining  them,  changes  identical  with  those 
which  are  usually  ascribed  to  the  action  of  great  geological 
causes,  and  sometimes  supposed  to  have  required  vast  periods 
of  time  for  their  accomplishment. 

"  This  breach,"  says  Forchhammcr,  "  which  converted  the 
Liimfjord  into  a  sound,  and  the  northern  part  of  Jutland  into 
an  island,  occasioned  remarkable  changes.  The  first  and  most 

*  ANDP.ESEN,  Om  Klitformationen,  pp.  68-72. 

t  Id.,  pp.  231,  232.  Andreseu's  work,  though  printed  in  1861,  was  finished 
in  1859.  Lyell  (Antiquity  of  Man,  1863,  p.  14)  says  :  "  Even  in  the  course 
of  the  present  century,  the  salt  waters  have  made  one  eruption  into  the 
Baltic  by  the  Liimfjord,  although  they  have  been  now  again  excluded." 


492  THE   LIIMFJORD. 

striking  phenomenon  was  the  sudden  destruction  of  almost  all 
the  fresh-water  fish  previously  inhabiting  this  lagoon,  which 
was  famous  for  its  abundant  fisheries.  Millions  of  fresh-water 
fish  were  thrown  on  shore,  partly  dead  and  partly  dying,  and 
were  carted  off  by  the  people.  A  few  only  survived,  and  still 
frequent  the  shores  at  the  mouth  of  the  brooks.  The  eel, 
however,  has  gradually  accommodated  itself  to  the  change  of 
circumstances,  and  is  found  in  all  parts  of  the  fjord,  while  to 
all  other  fresh-water  fish,  the  salt  water  of  the  ocean  seerns  to 
have  been  fatal.  It  is  more  than  probable  that  the  sand  washed 
in  by  the  irruption  covers,  in  many  places,  a  layer  of  dead  fish, 
and  has  thus  prepared  the  way  for  a  petrified  stratum  similar 
to  those  observed  in  so  many  older  formations. 

"  As  it  seems  to  be  a  law  of  nature  that  animals  whose  life 
is  suddenly  extinguished  wiiile  yet  in  full  vigor,  are  the  most 
likely  to  be  preserved  by  petrification,  we  find  here  one  of  the 
conditions  favorable  to  the  formation  of  such  a  petrified  stratum. 
The  bottom  of  the  Liimfjord  was  covered  with  a  vigorous 
growth  of  aquatic  plants,  belonging  both  to  fresh  and  to  salt 
water,  especially  Zostera  marina.  This  vegetation  totally 
disappeared  after  the  irruption,  and,  in  some  instances,  was 
buried  by  the  sand ;  and  here  again  we  have  a  familiar  phe- 
nornenon  often  observed  in  ancient  strata — the  indication  of 
a  given  formation  by  a  particular  vegetable  species — and  when 
the  strata  deposited  at  the  time  of  the  breach  shall  be  accessi 
ble  by  upheaval,  the  period  of  eruption  will  be  marked  by  a 
stratum,  of  Zostera,  and  probably  by  impressions  of  fresh 
water  fishes. 

"  It  is  very  remarkable  that  the  Zostera  marina,  a  sea  plant, 
was  destroyed  even  where  no  sand  was  deposited.  This  was 
probably  in  consequence  of  the  sudden  change  from  brackish  to 
salt  water.  *  *  It  is  well  established  that  the  Liimfjord 
communicated  with  the  German  Ocean  at  some  former  period. 
To  that  era  belong  the  deep  beds  of  oyster  shells  and  Cardium 
edule,  which  are  still  found  at  the  bottom  of  the  fjord.  And 
now,  after  an  interval  of  centuries,  during  which  the  lagoon 
contained  no  salt-water  shell  fish,  it  again  produces  great  nun> 


ENCROACHMENTS    OF   THE   SEA.  493 

bers  of  Mytilus  edulis.  Could  we  obtain  a  deep  section  of  the 
bottom,  we  should  find  beds  of  Ostrea  edulis  and  Cardium 
edulc,  then  a  layer  of  Zostcra  marina  with  fresh-water  fish, 
and  then  a  bed  of  Mytilus  edulis.  If,  in  course  of  time,  the 
new  channel  should  be  closed,  the  brooks  would  fill  the  lagoon 
again  with  fresh  water ;  fresh-water  fish  and  shell  fish  would 
reappear,  and  thus  we  should  have  a  repeated  alternation 
of  organic  inhabitants  of  the  sea  and  of  the  waters  of  the 
land. 

"  These  events  have  been  accompanied  with  but  a  com 
paratively  insignificant  change  of  land  surface,  while  the  for 
mations  in  the  bed  of  this  inland  sea  have  been  totally  revo 
lutionized  in  character."  * 

Coasts  of  Schles-wig-Holstein,  Holland,  and  France. 

On  the  islands  on  the  coast  of  Schleswig-Holstein,  the  ad 
vance  of  the  sea  has  been  more  unequivocal  and  more  rapid. 
Near  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  the  dunes  which  had 
protected  the  western  coast  of  the  island  of  Sylt  began  to  roll 
to  the  east,  and  the  sea  followed  closely  as  they  retired.  In 
1757,  the  church  of  Rantum,  a  village  upon  that  island,  was 
obliged  to  be  taken  down  in  consequence  of  the  advance  of  the 
sand  hills;  in  1791,  these  hills  had  passed  beyond  its  site,  the 
waves  had  swallowed  up  its  foundations,  and  the  sea  gained  so 
rapidly,  that,  fifty  years  later,  the  spot  where  they  lay  wras 
seven  hundred  feet  from  the  sliore.f 

The  most  prominent  geological  landmark  on  the  coast  of 
Holland  is  the  Huis  te  Britten,  Arx,  Britannica,  a  fortress 
built  by  the  Romans,  in  the  time  of  Caligula,  on  the  main 
land  near  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine.  At  the  close  of  the  seven 
teenth  century,  the  sea  had  advanced  sixteen  hundred  paces 
beyond  it.  The  older  Dutch  annalists  record,  with  much  pa 
rade  of  numerical  accuracy,  frequent  encroachments  of  the  sea 

*  FOECHHAMMER,  Gcognostisclie  Studien  am  Mceres-  Ufcr.  LEONIIAKD  iincl 
BKONN,  JahrbucJi^  1841,  pp.  11,  13. 

t  ANDRESES,  Om  Klitformationen,  pp.  68,  72. 


4:94:  ENCROACHMENTS    OF   THE   SEA. 

upon  many  parts  of  the  Netherlandish  coast.  But  though  the 
general  fact  of  an  advance  of  the  ocean  upon  the  land  is  es- 
tahlished  beyond  dispute,  the  precision  of  the  measurements 
which  have  been  given  is  open  to  question.  Staring,  however, 
who  thinks  the  erosion  of  the  coast  much  exaggerated  by  popu 
lar  geographers,  admits  a  loss  of  more  than  a  million  and  a 
half  acres,  chiefly  worthless  morass;*  and  it  is  certain  that 
but  for  the  resistance  of  man,  but  for  his  erection  of  dikes  and 
protection  of  dunes,  there  would  now  be  left  of  Holland  little 
but  the  name.  It  is,  as  has  been  already  seen,  still  a  debated 
question  among  geologists  whether  the  coast  of  Holland  now 
is,  and  for  centuries  has  been,  subsiding.  I  believe  most  in 
vestigators  maintain  the  affirmative  ;  and  if  the  fact  is  so,  the 
advance  of  the  sea  upon  the  land  is,  in  part,  due  to  this  cause. 
But  the  rate  of  subsidence  is  at  all  events  very  small,  and 
therefore  the  encroachments  of  the  ocean  upon  the  coast  are 
mainly  to  be  ascribed  to  the  erosion  and  transportation  of  the 
soil  by  marine  waves  and  currents. 

The  sea  is  fast  advancing  at  several  points  of  the  western 
coast  of  France,  and  unknown  causes  have  given  a  new  impulse 
to  its  ravages  since  the  commencement  of  the  present  century. 
Between  1830  and  1842,  the  Point  de  Grave,  on  the  north  side 
of  the  Gironde,  retreated  one  hundred  and  eighty  metres,  or 
about  fifty  feet  per  year ;  from  the  latter  year  to  184:6,  the  rate 
was  increased  to  more  than  three  times  that  quantity,  and  the 
loss  in  those  four  years  was  above  six  hundred  feet.  All  the 
buildings  at  the  extremity  of  the  peninsula  have  been  taken 
down  and  rebuilt  farther  landward,  and  the  lighthouse  of  the 
Grave  now  occupies  its  third  position.  The  sea  attacked  the 
base  of  the  peninsula  also,  and  the  Point  de  Grave  and  the  ad 
jacent  coasts  have  been  for  twenty  years  the  scene  of  one  of 
the  most  obstinately  contested  struggles  between  man  and  the 
ocean  recorded  in  the  annals  of  modern  engineering. 

It  cannot,  indeed,  be  affirmed  that  human  power  is  able  to 
arrest  altogether  the  incursions  of  the  waves  on  sandy  coasts, 

*   Voormaals  en  Tham,  pp.  126, 170. 


DRIFTING   OF   DUNE    SANDS.  4:95 

by  planting  the  beach,  and  clothing  the  dunes  with  wood.  On 
the  contrary,  both  in  Holland  and  on  the  French  coast,  it  has 
been  found  necessary  to  protect  the  dunes  themselves  by  piling 
and  by  piers  and  sea  walls  of  heavy  masonry.  But  experience 
has  amply  shown  that  the  processes  referred  to  are  entirely 
successful  in  preventing  the  movement  of  the  dunes,  and  the 
drifting  of  their  sands  over  cultivated  lands  behind  them  ;  and 
that,  at  the  same  time,  the  plantations  very  much  retard  the 
landward  progress  of  the  waters.* 

Drifting  of  Dune  Sands. 

Besides  their  importance  as  a  barrier  against  the  inroads 
of  the  ocean,  dunes  are  useful  by  sheltering  the  cultivated 
ground  behind  them  from  the  violence  of  the  sea  wind,  from 
salt  spray,  and  from  the  drifts  of  beach  sand  which  would 
otherwise  overwhelm  them.  But  the  dunes  themselves,  unless 
their  surface  sands  are  kept  moist,  and  confined  by  the  growth 
of  plants,  or  at  least  by  a  crust  of  vegetable  earth,  are  con 
stantly  rolling  inward ;  and  thus,  while,  on  one  side,  they  lay 
bare  the  traces  of  ancient  human  habitations  or  other  evidences 
of  the  social  life  of  primitive  man,  they  are,  on  the  other,  bury 
ing  fields,  houses,  churches,  and  converting  populous  districts 
into  barren  and  deserted  wastes. 

Especially  destructive  are  they  when,  by  any  accident,  a 
cavity  is  opened  into  them  to  a  considerable  depth,  thereby 
giving  the  wind  access  to  the  interior,  where  the  sand  is  thus 
first  dried,  and  then  scooped  out  and  scattered  far  over  the 
neighboring  soil.  The  dune  is  now  a  magazine  of  sand,  no 
longer  a  rampart  against  it,  and  mischief  from  this  source 
seems  more  difficult  to  resist  than  from  almost  any  other  drift, 
because  the  supply  of  material  at  the  command  of  the  wind,  is 
more  abundant  and  more  concentrated  than  in  its  original  thin 
and  widespread  deposits  on  the  beach.  The  burrowing  of 

*  See  a  very  interesting  article  entitled  "  Le  Littoral  de  la  France,"  by 
£LISEE  RECLUS,  in  the  JRevite  des  Deux  Mondes,  for  December,  1862,  pp. 
901,  936. 


496  DUNES   OF   GASCON  F. 

conies  in  the  dimes  is,  in  this  way,  not  unfrequently  a  cause  of 
their  destruction  and  of  great  injury  to  the  fields  behind  them. 
Drifts,  and  even  inland  sand  hills,  sometimes  result  from  break 
ing  the  surface  of  more  level  sand  deposits,  far  within  the 
range  of  the  coast  dunes.  Thus  we  learn  from  Staring,  that 
one  of  the  highest  inland  dunes  in  Friesland  owes  its  origin  to 
the  opening  of  the  drift  sand  by  the  uprooting  of  a  large  oak.* 
Great  as  are  the  ravages  produced  by  the  encroachment  of 
the  sea  upon  the  western  shores  of  continental  Europe,  they 
have  been  in  some  degree  compensated  by  spontaneous  marine 
deposits  at  other  points  of  the  coast,  and  we  have  seen  in  a 
former  chapter  that  the  industry  of  man  has  reclaimed  a  large 
territory  from  the  bosom  of  the  ocean.  These  latter  triumphs 
are  not  of  recent  origin,  and  the  incipient  victories  which  paved 
the  wray  for  them  date  back  perhaps  as  far  as  ten  centuries. 
In  the  mean  time,  the  dunes  had  been  left  to  the  operation  of 
the  laws  of  nature,  or  rather  freed,  by  human  imprudence, 
from  the  fetters  with  which  nature  had  bound  them,  and  it  is 
scarcely  three  generations  since  man  first  attempted  to  check 
their  destructive  movements.  As  they  advanced,  he  unresist 
ingly  yielded  and  retreated  before  them,  and  they  have  buried 
under  their  sandy  billows  many  hundreds  of  square  miles  of 
luxuriant  cornfields  and  vineyards  and  forests. 

Dunes  of  Gascony. 

On  the  west  coast  of  France,  a  belt  of  dunes,  varying  in 
width  from  a  quarter  of  a  mile  to  five  miles,  extends  from  the 
Adour  to  the  estuary  of  the  Gironde,  and  covers  an  area  of 
three  hundred  and  seventy-five  square  miles.  "When  not  fixed 
by  vegetable  growths,  they  advance  eastward  at  a  mean  rate 
of  about  one  rod,  or  sixteen  and  a  half  feet,  a  year.  We  do 
not  know  historically  when  they  began  to  drift,  but  if  we  sup 
pose  their  motion  to  have  been  always  the  same  as  at  present, 
they  would  have  passed  over  the  space  between  the  sea  coast 

*  De  Bodem  van  Nederland,  i,  p.  425.    See  Appendix,  No.      « 


DUNES    OF   DENMARK.  497 

and  tlieir  eastern  boundary,  and  covered  the  large  area  above 
mentioned,  in  fourteen  hundred  years.  We  know,  from  writ 
ten  records,  that  they  have  buried  extensive  fields  and  forests 
and  thriving  villages,  and  changed  the  courses  of  rivers,  and 
that  the  lighter  particles  carried  from  them  by  the  winds,  even 
where  not  transported  in  sufficient  quantities  to  form  sand 
hills,  have  rendered  sterile  much  land  formerly  fertile.*  They 
have  also  injuriously  obstructed  the  natural  drainage  of  the 
maritime  districts  by  choking  up  the  beds  of  the  streams,  and 
forming  lakes  and  pestilential  swamps  of  no  inconsiderable  ex 
tent.  In  fact,  so  completely  do  they  embank  the  coast,  that 
between  the  Gironde  and  the  village  of  Mimizan,  a  distance  of 
one  hundred  miles,  there  are  but  two  outlets  for  the  discharge 
of  all  the  waters  which  flow  from  the  land  to  the  sea  ;  and  the 
eastern  front  of  the  dunes  is  bordered  by  a  succession  of  stag 
nant  pools,  some  of  which  are  more  than  six  miles  in  length 
and  breadth.f 

TJie  Dimes  of  Denmark  and  Prussia. 

In  the  small  kingdom  of  Denmark,  inclusive  of  the  duchies 
of  Schleswig  and  Holstein,  the  dunes  cover  an  area  of  more 
than  two  hundred  and  sixty  square  miles.  The  breadth  of  the 

*  The  movement  of  the  dimes  lias  been  hardly  less  destructive  on  the 
north  side  of  the  Gironde.  See  the  valuable  article  of  ELTSEE  RECLUB 
already  referred  to,  in  the  Revue  dcs  Deux  Mondes,  for  December,  1862, 
entitled  "  Le  Littoral  de  la  France." 

t  LAVAL,  Memoire  sur  les  Dunes  du  Golfe  de  Gascogne,  Annalcs  dcs 
Fonts  ci  Chausates,  1847.  p.  223.  The  author  adds,  as  a  curious  and  unex 
plained  fact,  that  some  of  these  pools,  though  evidently  not  original  for 
mations  but  mere  accumulations  of  water  dammed  up  by  the  dunes,  have, 
along  their  western  shore,  near  the  base  of  the  sand  hills,  a  depth  of  more 
than  one  hundred  and  thirty  feet,  and  hence  their  bottoms  are  not  less 
than  eighty  feet  below  the  level  of  the  lowest  tides.  Their  western  banks 
descend  steeply,  conforming  nearly  to  the  slope  of  the  dunes,  while  on  the 
northeast  and  south  the  inclination  of  their  beds  is  very  gradual.  The 
greatest  depth  of  these  pools  corresponds  to  that  of  the  sea  ten  miles  from 
the  shore.  Is  it  possible  that  the  weight  of  the  sands  has  pressed  together 
the  soil  on  which  they  rest,  and  thus  occasioned  a  subsidence  of  the  surface 
extending  beyond  their  base  ?  See  Appendix,  No.  59. 
32 


4:98  DUNES   OF   PRUSSIA. 

chain  is  very  various,  and  in  some  places  it  consists  only  of  a 
single  row  of  sand  hills,  while  in  others,  it  is  more  than  six 
miles  wide.  The  general  rate  of  eastward  movement  of  the 
drifting  dunes  is  from  three  to  twenty-four  feet  per  annum. 
If  we  adopt  the  mean  of  thirteen  feet  and  a  half  for  the  annual 
motion,  the  dunes  have  traversed  the  widest  part  of  the  helt  in 
about  twenty-five  hundred  years.  Historical  data  are  wanting 
as  to  the  period  of  the  formation  of  these  dunes  and  of  the 
commencement  of  their  drifting ;  but  there  is  recorded  evi 
dence  that  they  have  buried  a  vast  extent  of  valuable  land 
within  three  or  four  centuries,  and  further  proof  is  found  in 
the  fact  that  the  movement  of  the  sands  is  constantly  uncover 
ing  ruins  of  ancient  buildings,  and  other  evidences  of  human 
occupation,  at  points  far  within  the  present  limits  of  the  unin 
habitable  desert.  Andresen  estimates  the  average  depth  of  the 
sand  deposited  over  this  area  at  thirty  feet,  which  would  give 
a  cubic  mile  and  a  half  for  the  total  quantity.* 

The  drifting  of  the  dunes  on  the  coast  of  Prussia  com 
menced  not  much  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago.  The 
Frische  Nehrung  is  separated  from  the  mainland  by  the 
Frische  Haif,  and  there  is  but  a  narrow  strip  of  arable  land 
along  its  eastern  borders.  Hence  its  rolling  sands  have  covered 
a  comparatively  small  extent  of  dry  land,  but  fields  and  vil 
lages  have  been  buried  and  valuable  forests  laid  waste  by 
them.  The  loose  coast  row  has  drifted  over  the  inland  ranges, 
which,  as  was  noticed  in  the  description  of  these  dunes  on  a 
former  page,  were  protected  by  a  surface  of  different  composi 
tion,  and  the  sand  has  thus  been  raised  to  a  height  which  it 
could  not  have  reached  upon  level  ground.  This  elevation  has 
enabled  it  to  advance  upon  and  overwhelm  woods,  which,  upon 
a  plain,  would  have  checked  its  progress,  and,  in  one  instance, 
a  forest  of  many  hundred  acres  of  tall  pines  was  destroyed  by 
the  drifts  between  1804  and  1827. 

Control  of  Dunes  by  Man. 
There  are  three  principal  modes  in  which  the  industry  of 

*  ANDKESEN,  Om  Klitformationem,  pp.  56,  79,  82. 


ARTIFICIAL    DILNE3.  499 

man  is  brought  to  bear  upon  the  dunes.  First,  the  creation  of 
them,  at  points  where,  from  changes  in  the  currents  or  other 
causes,  new  encroachments  of  the  sea  are  threatened ;  second, 
the  maintenance  and  protection  of  them  where  they  have  been 
naturally  formed ;  and  third,  the  removal  of  the  inner  rows 
where  the  belt  is  so  broad  that  no  danger  is  to  be  apprehended 
from  the  loss  of  them. 

Artificial  Formation  of  Dunes. 

In  describing  the  natural  formation  of  dunes,  it  was  said 
that  they  began  with  an  accumulation  of  sand  around  some 
vegetable  or  other  accidental  obstruction  to  the  drifting  of  the 
particles.  A  high,  perpendicular  cliff,  which  deadens  the  wrind 
altogether,  prevents  all  accumulation  of  sand  ;  but,  up  to  a 
certain  point,  the  higher  and  broader  the  obstruction,  the  more 
sand  will  heap  up  in  front  of  it,  and  the  more  will  that  which 
falls  behind  it  be  protected  from  drifting  farther.  This  familiar 
observation  has  taught  the  inhabitants  of  the  coast  that  a,n 
artificial  wall  or  dike  will,  in  many  situations,  give  rise  to  a 
broad  belt  of  dunes.  Thus  a  sand  dike  or  wall,  of  three  or  four 
miles  in  length,  thrown  in  1610  across  the  Koegras,  a  tide- 
washed  flat  between  the  Zuiderzee  and  the  North  Sea,  has 
occasioned  the  formation  of  rows  of  dunes  a  mile  in  breadth, 
and  thus  excluded  the  sea  altogether  from  the  Koegras.  A 
similar  dike,  called  the  Zijperzeedijk,  has  produced  another 
scarcely  less  extensive  belt  in  the  course  of  two  centuries. 

A  few  years  since,  the  sea  was  threatening  to  cut  through 
the  island  of  Am  eland,  and,  by  encroachment  on  the  southern 
side  and  the  blowing  off  of  the  sand  from  a  low  flat  which  con 
nected  the  two  higher  parts  of  the  island,  it  had  made  such 
progress,  that  in  heavy  storms  the  waves  sometimes  rolled 
quite  across  the  isthmus.  The  construction  of  a  breakwater 
and  a  sand  dike  have  already  checked  the  advance  of  the  sea, 
and  a  large  number  of  sand  hills  has  been  formed,  the  rapid 
growth  of  which  promises  complete  future  security  against 
both  wind  and  wave.  Similar  effects  have  been  produced  by 


500  PROTECTION    OF   DUNES. 

the  erection  of  plank  fences,  and  even  of  simple  screens  of 
wattling  and  reeds.* 

Protection  of  Dimes. 

The  dunes  of  Holland  are  sometimes  protected  from  the 
dashing  of  the  waves  by  a  revetement  of  stone,  or  by  piles ; 
and  the  lateral  high-water  currents,  which  wash  away  their 
base,  are  occasionally  checked  by  transverse  walls  running 
from  the  foot  of  the  dunes  to  low-water  mark  ;  but  the  great 
expense  of  such  constructions  has  prevented  their  adoption  on 
a  large  scale,  f  The  principal  means  relied  on  for  the  pro 
tection  of  the  sand  hills  are  the  planting  of  their  surfaces  and 
the  exclusion  of  burrowing  and  grazing  animals.  There  are 
grasses,  creeping  plants,  and  shrubs  of  spontaneous  growth, 
which  flourish  in  loose  sand,  and,  if  protected,  spread  over  con 
siderable  tracts,  and  finally  convert  their  face  into  a  soil  ca 
pable  of  cultivation,  or,  at  least,  of  producing  forest  trees. 
Krause  enumerates  one  hundred  and  seventy-one  plants  as 
native  to  the  coast  sands  of  Prussia,  and  the  observations  of 
Andresen  in  Jutland  carry  the  number  of  these  vegetables  up 
to  two  hundred  and  thirty-four. 

Some  of  these  plants,  especially  the  Arundo  arenaria  or 
arenosa,  or  Psamma  or  Psammophila  are?iaria — Klittetag,  or 
Hjelme  in  Danish,  helm  in  Dutch,  Dunenhalm,  Sandschilf,  or 
Hugelrohr  in  German,  gourbet  in  French,  and  marram  in 
English — are  exclusively  confined  to  sandy  soils,  and  thrive 

*  STAKING,  De  Bodcm  van  Nederland,  i,  pp.  329-331.  Id.,  VoormaaU 
en  Thans,  p.  163.  ANDIJESEN,  Om  Klitformationcn,  pp.  280,  295. 

The  creation  of  new  dunes,  by  the  processes  mentioned  in  the  text, 
seems  to  be  much  older  in  Europe  than  the  adoption  of  measures  for  se 
curing  them  by  planting.  Dr.  Dwiglit  mentions  a  case  in  Massachusetts, 
where  a  beach  was  restored,  and  new  dunes  formed,  by  planting  beach 
grass.  "  Within  the  memory  of  my  informant,  the  sea  broke  over  the 
beach  which  connects  Truro  with  Province  Town,  and  swept  the  body  of 
it  away  for  some  distance.  The  beach  grass  was  immediately  planted  on 
the  spot ;  in  consequence  of  which  the  beach  was  again  raised  to  a  suffi 
cient  height,  and  in  various  places  into  hills." — DwigJiVs  Travels,  iii,  p.  93. 

t  STAKING,  i,  pp.  310,  332. 


PROTECTION    OF   DUNES.  50.* 

well  only  in  a  saline  atmosphere.*  The  arundo  grows  to  the 
height  of  about  twenty-four  inches,  but  sends  its  strong  roots 
with  their  many  rootlets  to  a  distance  of  forty  or  iifty  feet.  It 
has  the  peculiar  property  of  flourishing  best  in  the  loosest  soil, 
and  a  sand  shower  seems  to  refresh  it  as  the  rain  revives  the 
thirsty  plants  of  the  common  earth.  Its  roots  bind  together  the 
dunes,  and  its  leaves  protect  their  surface.  When  the  sand 
ceases  to  drift,  the  arundo  dies,  its  decaying  roots  fertilizing 
the  sand,  and  the  decomposition  of  its  leaves  forming  a  layer 
of  vegetable  earth  over  it.  Then  follows  a  succession  of  other 

O 

plants  which  gradually  fit  the  sand  hills,  by  growth  and  decay, 
for  forest  planting,  for  pasturage,  and  sometimes  for  ordinary 
agricultural  use. 

But  the  protection  and  gradual  transformation  of  the  dunes 
is  not  the  only  service  rendered  by  this  valuable  plant.  Its 
leaves  are  nutritious  food  for  sheep  and  cattle,  its  seeds  for 
poultry  ;  f  cordage  and  netting  twine  are  manufactured  from 
its  fibres,  it  makes  a  good  material  for  thatching,  and  its  dried 
roots  furnish  excellent  fuel.  These  useful  qualities,  unfortu 
nately,  are  too  often  prejudicial  to  its  growth.  The  peasants 
feed  it  down  with  their  cattle,  cut  it  for  rope  making,  or  dig  it 
up  for  fuel,  and  it  has  been  found  necessary  to  resort  to  severe 
legislation  to  prevent  them  from  bringing  ruin  upon  them 
selves  by  thus  improvidently  sacrificing  their  most  effectual 
safeguard  against  the  drifting  of  the  sands. :{: 

In  1539,  a  decree  of  Christian  III,  king  of  Denmark,  im 
posed  a  fine  upon  persons  convicted  of  destro}ring  certain  spe 
cies  of  sand  plants  upon  the  west  coast  of  Jutland.  This  ordi 
nance  was  renewed  and  made  more  comprehensive  in  1558, 

*  There  is  some  confusion  in  the  popular  use  of  these  names,  and  in 
the  scientific  designations  of  sand  plants,  and  they  are  possibly  applied  to 
different  plants  in  different  places.  Some  writers  style  the  gourbet  Gala- 
magrostis  arenaria,  and  distinguish  it  from  the  Danish  Klittctag  or  Hjelme. 

f  Bread,  not  indeed  very  palatable,  has  been  made  of  the  seeds  of  the 
arundo.  but  the  quantity  which  can  be  gathered  is  not  sufficient  to  form  an 
important  economical  resource. — ANDKESEN,  Oni  Klitformationen,  p.  160. 

\  BEKGSOE,  Retentions  Virlcsomlicd,  ii,  p.  4. 


502  DUNES    OF   DENMARK. 

and  in  1569  the  inhabitants  of  several  districts  were  required, 
by  royal  rescript,  to  do  their  best  to  check  the  sand  drifts, 
though  the  specific  measures  to  be  adopted  for  that  purpose 
are  not  indicated.  Various  laws  against  stripping  the  dunes 
of  their  vegetation  were  enacted  in  the  following  century,  but 
no  active  measures  were  taken  for  the  subjugation  of  the  sand 
drifts  until  1779,  when  a  preliminary  system  of  operation  for 
that  purpose  was  adopted.  This  consisted  in  little  more  than 
the  planting  of  the  A.rundo  arenaria  and  other  sand  plants, 
and  the  exclusion  of  animals  destructive  to  these  vegetables.* 

*  Measures  were  taken  for  the  protection  of  the  dunes  of  Cape  Cod,  in 
Massachusetts,  during  the  colonial  period,  though  I  believe  they  are  now 
substantially  abandoned.  A  hundred  years  ago,  before  the  valley  of  the 
Mississippi,  or  even  the  rich  plains  of  Central  and  Western  ISTew  York, 
were  opened  to  the  white  settler,  the  value  of  land  was  relatively  much 
greater  in  New  England  than  it  is  at  present,  and  consequently  some  rural 
improvements  were  then  worth  making,  which  would  not  now  yield  suffi 
cient  returns  to  tempt  the  investment  of  capital.  The  m.mey  and  the  time 
required  to  subdue  and  render  productive  twenty  acres  of  sea  sand  on  Cape 
Cod,  would  buy  a  "section"  and  rear  a  family  in  Illinois.  The  son  of  the 
Pilgrims,  therefore,  abandons  the  sand  hills,  and  seeks  a  better  fortune  on 
the  fertile  prairies  of  the  West. 

Dr.  D wight,  who  visited  Cape  Cod  in  the  year  1800,  after  describing 
the  "beach  grass,  a  vegetable  bearing  a  general  resemblance  to  sedge,  but 
of  a  light  bluish-green,  and  of  a  coarse  appearance,"  which  u  flourishes 
with  a  strong  and  rapid  vegetation  on  the  sands,"  observes  that  he  received 
"from  a  Mr.  Collins,  formerly  of  Truro,  the  following  information:" 
u  When  he  lived  at  Truro,  the  inhabitants  were,  under  the  authority  of 
law,  regularly  warned  in  the  month  of  April,  yearly,  to  plant  beach  grass, 
as,  in  other  towns  of  New  England,  they  are  warned  to  repair  highways. 
It  was  required  by  the  laws  of  the  State,  and  under  the  proper  penalties 
for  disobedience  ;  being  as  regular  a  public  tax  as  any  other.  The  people, 
therefore,  generally  attended  and  performed  the  labor.  The  grass  was  dug 
in  bunches,  as  it  naturally  grows  ;  and  each  bunch  divided  into  a  number 
of  smaller  ones.  These  were  set  out  in  the  sand  at  distances  of  three  feet. 
After  one  row  was  set,  others  were  placed  behind  it  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
shut  up  the  interstices  ;  or,  as  a  carpenter  would  say,  so  as  to  break  the 
joints.  *  *  *  When  it  is  once  set,  it  grows  and  spreads  with  rapidity. 
*  *  *  The  seeds  are  so  heavy  that  they  bend  down  the  heads  of  the 
grass ;  and  when  ripe,  drop  directly  down  by  its  side,  where  they  imme 
diately  vegetate.  Thus  in  a  short  time  the  ground  is  covered. 


DUNES   OF   DENMARK.  503 

Ten  years  later,  plantations  of  forest  trees,  which  have  since 
proved  so  valuable  a  means  of  fixing  the  dunes  and  rendering 
them  productive,  were  commenced,  and  have  been  continued 
ever  since.*  During  this  latter  period,  Bremontier,  without 
any  knowledge  of  what  was  doing  in  Denmark,  experimented 
upon  the  cultivation  of  forest  trees  on  the  dunes  of  Gascony, 
and  perfected  a  system,  which,  with  some  improvements  in 

41  Where  this  covering  is  found,  none  of  the  sand  is  blown.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  accumulated  and  raised  continually  as  snow  gathers  and 
rises  among  bushes,  or  branches  of  trees  cut  and  spread  upon  the  earth. 
Nor  does  the  grass  merely  defend  the  surface  on  which  it  is  planted ;  but 
rises,  as  that  rises  by  new  accumulations  ;  and  always  overtops  the  sand, 
however  high  that  may  be  raised  by  the  wind." — Dwiglifs  Travels  in  New 
England  and  New  York,  ii,  p.  92,  93. 

This  information  was  received  in  1800,  and  it  relates  to  a  former  state 
of  things,  probably  more  than  twenty  years  previous,  and  earlier  than 
1779,  when  the  Government  of  Denmark  first  seriously  attempted  the  con 
quest  of  the  dunes. 

The  depasturing  of  the  beach  grass — a  plant  allied  in  habits,  if  not  in 
botanical  character,  to  the  arundo — has  been  attended  with  very  injurious 
effects  in  Massachusetts.  Dr.  Dwight,  after  referring  to  the  laws  for  its 
propagation,  already  cited,  says :  "  The  benefit  of  this  useful  plant,  and  of 
these  prudent  regulations,  is,  however,  in  some  measure  lost.  There  are  in 
Province  Town,  as  I  was  informed,  one  hundred  and  forty  cows.  These 
animals,  being  stinted  in  their  means  of  subsistence,  are  permitted  to 
wander,  at  times,  in  search  of  food.  In  every  such  case,  they  make  depre 
dations  on  the  beach  grass,  and  prevent  its  seeds  from  being  formed.  In 
this  manner  the  plant  is  ultimately  destroyed." — Travels,  iii,  p.  94. 

On  page  101  of  the  same  volume,  the  author  mentions  an  instance  of 
great  injury  from  this  cause.  "  Here,  about  one  thousand  acres  were 
entirely  blown  away  to  the  depth,  in  many  places,  of  ten  feet.  *  *  * 
Not  a  green  thing  was  visible  except  the  whortleberries,  which  tufted  a 
few  lonely  hillocks  rising  to  the  height  of  the  original  surface  and  prevented 
by  this  defence  from  being  blown  away  also.  These,  although  they  varied 
the  prospect,  added  to  the  gloorn  by  their  strongly  picturesque  appearance, 
by  marking  exactly  the  original  level  of  the  plain,  and  by  showing  us  in 
this  manner  the  immensity  of  the  mass  which  had  been  thus  carried  away 
by  the  wind.  The  beach  grass  had  been  planted  here,  and  the  ground  had 
been  formerly  enclosed  ;  but  the  gates  had  been  left  open,  and  the  cattle 
had  destroyed  this  invaluable  plant." 

*  ANDKESEN,  Om  Kfitformationen,  pp.  237,  240. 


504  DUNES    OF    GASCONT. 

matters  of  detail,  is  still  largely  pursued  on  those  shores.  The 
example  of  Denmark  was  soon  followed  in  the  neighboring 
kingdom  of  Prussia,  and  in  the  Netherlands ;  and,  as  we  shall 
see  hereafter,  these  improvements  have  been  everywhere 
crowned  with  most  flattering  success. 

Under  the  administration  of  Reventlov,  a  little  before  the 
close  of  the  last  century,  the  Danish  Government  organized  a 
regular  system  of  improvement  in  the  economy  of  the  dunes. 
They  were  planted  with  the  arundo  and  other  vegetables  of 
similar  habits,  protected  against  trespassers,  and  at  last  partly 
covered  with  forest  trees.  By  these  means  much  waste  soil  has 
been  converted  into  arable  ground,  a  large  growth  of  valuable 
timber  obtained,  and  the  further  spread  of  the  drifts,  which 
threatened  to  lay  wraste  the  whole  peninsula  of  Jutland,  to  a 
considerable  extent  arrested. 

In  France,  the  operations  for  fixing  and  reclaiming  the 
dunes — which  began  under  the  direction  of  Bremontier  about 
the  same  time  as  in  Denmark,  and  which  are,  in  principle  and 
in  many  of  their  details,  similar  to  those  employed  in  the  latter 
kingdom — have  been  conducted  on  a  far  larger  scale,  and  with 
greater  success,  than  in  any  other  country.  This  is  partly 
owing  to  a  climate  more  favorable  to  the  growth  of  suitable 
forest  trees  than  that  of  Northern  Europe,  and  partly  to  the 
liberality  of  the  Government,  which,  having  more  important 
landed  interests  to  protect,  has  put  larger  means  at  the  disposal 
of  the  engineers  than  Denmark  and  Prussia  have  found  it  con 
venient  to  appropriate  to  that  purpose.  The  area  of  the  dunes 
already  secured  from  drifting,  and  planted  by  the  processes  in 
vented  by  Bremontier  and  perfected  by  his  successors,  is  about 
100,000  acres.*  This  amount  of  productive  soil,  then,  has  been 
added  to  the  resources  of  France,  and  a  still  greater  quantity 

*  u  These  plantations,  perse veringly  continued  from  the  time  of  Bre 
montier  now  cover  more  than  40,000  hectares,  and  compose  forests  which 
are  not  only  the  salvation  of  the  department,  but  constitute  its  wealth." — - 
CLAVE,  Etudes  Forestieres,  p.  254. 

Other  authors  have  stated  the  plantations  of  the  French  dunes  to  be 
mnch  more  extensive. 


TREES    SUITED   TO  DUNE   PLANTATIONS.  505 

of  valuable  land  has  been  thereby  rescued  from  the  otherwise 
certain  destruction  with  which  it  was  threatened  by  the  ad 
vance  of  the  rolling  sand  hills. 

The  improvements  of  the  dunes  on  the  coast  of  West  Prussia 
began  in  1795,  under  Soren  Bjorn,  a  native  of  Denmark,  and, 
with  the  exception  of  the  ten  years  between  1807  and  1817, 
they  have  been  prosecuted  ever  since.  The  methods  do  not 
differ  essentially  from  those  employed  in  Denmark  and  France, 
though  they  are  modified  by  local  circumstances,  and,  with 
respect  to  the  trees  selected  for  planting,  by  climate.  In  1850> 
between  the  mouth  of  the  Vistula  and  Kahlberg,  6,300  acres, 
including  about  1,900  acres  planted  with  pines  and  birclies? 
had  been  secured  from  drifting;  between  Kahlberg  and  the 
eastern  boundary  of  West-Prussia,  8,000  acres ;  and  important 
preliminary  operations  had  been  carried  on  for  subduing  the 
dunes  on  the  west  coast.* 

Trees  suited  to  Dune  Plantations. 

The  tree  which  has  been  found  to  thrive  best  upon  the 
sand  hills  of  the  French  coast,  and  at  the  same  time  to  confine 
the  sand  most  firmly  and  yield  the  largest  pecuniary  returns, 
is  the  maritime  pine,  Pinus  maritime^  a  species  valuable  both 
for  its  timber  and  for  its  resinous  products.  It  is  always  grown 
from  seed,  and  the  young  shoots  require  to  be  protected  for 
several  seasons,  by  the  branches  of  other  trees,  planted  in  rows, 
or  spread  over  the  surface  and  staked  down,  by  the  growth  of 
the  Arundo  arenaria  and  other  small  sand  plants,  or  by  wat 
tled  hedges.  The  beach,  from  which  the  sand  is  derived,  has 
been  generally  planted  with  the  arundo,  because  the  pine  does 
not  thrive  well  so  near  the  sea ;  but  it  is  thought  that  a  species 
of  tamarisk  is  likely  to  succeed  in  that  latitude  even  better 
than  the  arando.  The  shade  and  the  protection  offered  by  the 
branching  top  of  this  pine  are  favorable  to  the  growth  of  decid 
uous  trees,  and,  while  still  young,  of  shrubs  and  smaller  plants, 
which  contribute  more  rapidly  to  the  formation  of  vegetable 

*  KBUSE,  Dunenlav,  pp.  34,  38,  40. 


50G  THE    MARITIME    PINE. 

mould,  and  thus,  when  the  pine  has  once  taken  root,  the  re 
demption  of  the  waste  is  considered  as  effectually  secured. 

In  France,  the  maritime  pine  is  planted  on  the  sands  of  the 
interior  as  well  as  on  the  dunes  of  the  sea  coast,  and  with  equal 
advantage.  This  tree  resembles  the  pitch  pine  of  the  Southern 
American  States  in  its  habits,  and  is  applied  to  the  same  uses. 
The  extraction  of  turpentine  from  it  begins  at  the  age  of  about 
twenty  years,  or  when  it  has  attained  a  diameter  of  from  nine 
to  twelve  inches.  Incisions  are  made  up  and  down  the  trunk, 
to  the  depth  of  about  half  an  inch  in  the  wood,  and  it  is  insist 
ed  that  if  not  more  than  two  such  slits  are  cut,  the  tree  is  not 
sensibly  injured  by  the  process.  The  growth,  indeed,  is  some 
what  checked,  but  the  wood  becomes  superior  to  that  of  trees 
from  which  the  turpentine  is  not  extracted.  Thus  treated,  the 
pine  continues  to  nourish  to  the  age  of  one  hundred  or  one 
hundred  and  twenty  years,  and  up  to  this  age  the  trees  on  a 
hectare  yield  annually  350  kilogrammes  of  essence  of  turpen 
tine,  and  280  kilogrammes  of  resin,  worth  together  110  francs. 
The  expense  of  extraction  and  distillation  is  calculated  at  44 
francs,  and  a  clear  profit  of  66  francs  per  hectare,  or  more  than 
live  dollars  per  acre,  is  left.*  This  is  exclusive  of  the  value  of 
the  timber,  when  finally  cut,  which,  of  course,  amounts  to  a 
very  considerable  sum. 

In  Denmark,  where  the  climate  is  much  colder,  hardier 
conifers,  as  well  as  the  birch  and  other  northern  trees,  are 
found  to  answer  a  better  purpose  than  the  maritime  pine,  and 

*  These  processes  are  substantially  similar  to  those  employed  in  the 
pineries  of  the  Carolinas,  but  they  are  better  systematized  and  more 
economically  conducted  in  France.  In  the  latter  country,  all  the  products 
of  the  pine,  even  to  the  cones,  find  a  remunerating  market,  while,  in 
America,  the  price  of  resin  is  so  low,  that  in  the  fierce  steamboat  races 
on  the  great  rivers,  large  quantities  of  it  are  thrown  into  the  furnaces  to 
increase  the  intensity  of  the  fires.  In  a  carefully  prepared  article  on  the 
Southern  pineries  published  in  an  American  magazine — I  think  Harper's — 
a,few  year*  ago,  it  was  stated  that  the  resin  from  the  turpentine  distilleries 
was  sometimes  allowed  to  run  to  waste ;  and  the  writer,  in  one  instance, 
observed  a  mass,  thus  rejected  as  rubbish,  which  was  estimated  to  amount 
to  two  thousand  barrels.  See  Appendix,  No,  60. 


TOTAL    EXTENT    OF    DUNES.  507 

it  is  doubtful  whether  this  tree  would  be  able  to  resist  the  win 
ter  on  the  dunes  of  Massachusetts.  Probably  the  pitch  pine  of 
the  Northern  States,  in  conjunction  with  some  of  the  American 
oaks,  birches,  and  poplars,  and  especially  the  robinia  or  locust, 
would  prove  very  suitable  to  be  employed  on  the  sand  hills  of 
Cape  Cod  and  Long  Island.  The  ailanthus,  now  coming  into 
notice  as  a  sand-loving  tree,  may,  perhaps,  serve  a  better  pur 
pose  than  any  of  them, 

Extent  of  Dunes  in  Europe. 

The  dunes  of  Denmark,  as  we  have  seen,  cover  an  area  of 
two  hundred  and  sixty  square  miles,  or  one  hundred  and 
sixty-six  thousand  acres ;  those  of  the  Prussian  coast  are 
vaguely  estimated  at  from  eighty-five  to  one  hundred  and  ten 

O  t/  O        v 

thousand  acres;  those  of  Holland  at  one  hundred  and 'forty 
thousand  acres  ;  *  those  of  Gascony  at  about  three  hundred 
thousand  acres,  f  I. do  not  iincl  any  estimate  of  their  extent  in 
other  provinces  of  France,  in  the  duchies  of  Schleswig  and 
Ilolstein,  or  in  the  Baltic  provinces  of  .Russia,  but  it  is  probable 
that  the  entire  quantity  of  dune  land  upon  the  eastern  shores 
of  the  Atlantic  and  the  Baltic  does  not  fall  much  short  of  a 
million  of  acres.  J  This  vast  deposit  of  sea  sand  extends  along 

*  AXDEESEX,  Om  Klitformationen,  pp.  78,  202,  275. 

t  LAVAL,  Memoiresur  Ics  Dunes  du  Golfe  de  Gascogne,  Annalcs  dcs  Ponts 
et  Chaufsceej  1847,  2me  semestre,  p.  261.  See  Appendix,  ISTo, 

J  There  are  extensive  ranges  of  dunes  on  various  parts  of  the  coasts  of 
the  British  Islands,  but  I  find  no  estimate  of  their  area.  Pannewitz  (An- 
leitung  zam  Aribau  dcr  Siimlflachen),  as  cited  hy  Andresen  (Om  Klitfor- 
malionen,  p.  45),  states  that  the  drifting  sands  of  Europe,  including,  of 
course,  sand  plains  as  well  as  dunes,  cover  an  extent  of  21,000  square  miles. 
This  is,  perhaps,  an  exaggeration,  though  there  is,  undoubtedly,  much  more 
desert  land  of  this  description  on  the  European  continent  than  has  been 
generally  supposed.  There  is  no  question  that  most  of  this  waste  is  capa 
ble  of  reclamation  by  simple  planting,  and  no  mode  of  physical  improve 
ment  is  better  worth  the  attention  of  civilized  Governments  than  this. 

There  are  often  serious  objections  to  extensive  forest  planting  on  soila 
capable  of  being  otherwise  made  productive,  but  they  do  not  apply  to  sand 


508  DUNE  VINEYARDS  OF  CAP  BRETON. 

the  coast  for  a  distance  of  several  Imndred  miles,  and  from  the 
time  of  the  destruction  of  the  forests  which  covered  it,  to  the 
year  1789,  the  whole  line  was  rolling  inward  and  burying  the 
soil  beneath  it,  or  rendering  the  fields  unproductive  by  the 
sand  which  drifted  from  it.  At  the  same  time,  as  the  sand 
hills  moved  eastward,  the  ocean  was  closely  following  their 
retreat  and  swallowing  up  the  ground  they  had  covered,  as 
fast  as  their  movement  left  it  bare. 

Planting  the  dunes  has  completely  prevented  the  surface 
sands  from  blowing  over  the  soil  to  the  leeward  of  the  planta 
tions,  and  though  it  has  not,  in  all  cases,  arrested  the  encroach 
ments  of  the  sea,  it  has  so  greatly  retarded  the  rapidity  of  their 
advance,  that  sandy  coasts,  when  once  covered  with  forests, 
may  be  considered  as  substantially  secure,  so  long  as  proper 
measures  are  taken  for  the  protection  of  the  woods. 

Dune  Vineyards  of  Cap  Breton. 

In  the  vicinity  of  Cap  Breton  in  France,  a  peculiar  process 
is  successfully  employed,  both  for  preventing  the  drifting  of 
dunes,  and  for  rendering  the  sands  themselves  immediately 
productive  ;  but  this  method  is  applicable  only  in  exceptional 
cases  of  favorable  climate  and  exposure.  It  consists  in  plant 
ing  vineyards  upon  the  dunes,  and  protecting  them  by  hedges 
of  broom,  Erica  scoparia,  so  disposed  as  to  form  rectangles 
about  thirty  feet  by  forty.  The  vines  planted  in  these  enclo 
sures  thrive  admirably,  and  the  grapes  produced  by  them  are 
among  the  best  grown  in  France.  The  dunes  are  so  far  from 
being  an  unfavorable  soil  for  the  vine,  that  fresh  sea-sand  is 
regularly  employed  as  a  fertilizer  for  it,  alternating  every  other 
season  with  ordinary  manure.  The  quantity  of  sand  thus  ap 
plied  every  second  year,  raises  the  surface  of  the  vineyard 
about  four  or  five  inches.  The  vines  are  cut  down  every  year 
to  three  or  four  shoots,  and  the  raising  of  the  soil  rapidly  cov- 

•vrastes,  which,  until  covered  by  woods,  are  not  only  a  useless  incumbrance, 
but  a  source  of  serious  danger  to  all  human  improvements  in  the  neighbor 
hood  of  them. 


REMOVAL   OF   DUNES INLAND    SAND    PLAINS.  509 

ers  the  old  stocks.  As  fast  as  buried,  they  send  out  new  roots 
near  the  surface,  and  thus  the  vineyard  is  constantly  renewed, 
and  has  always  a  youthful  appearance,  though  it  may  have 
been  already  planted  a  couple  of  generations.  This  practice  is 
ascertained  to  have  been  followed  for  two  centuries,  and  is 
among  the  oldest  well-authenticated  attempts  of  man  to  resist 
and  vanquish  the  dunes.* 

Removal  of  Dunes. 

The  artificial  removal  of  dunes,  no  longer  necessary  as  a 
protection,  does  not  appear  to  have  been  practised  upon  a  large 
scale  except  in  the  Netherlands,  where  the  numerous  canals 
furnish  an  easy  and  economical  means  of  transporting  the 
sand,  and  where  the  construction  and  maintenance  of  sea  and 
river  dikes,  and  of  causeways  and  other  embankments  and 
fillings,  create  a  great  demand  for  that  material.  Sand  is  also 
employed  in  Holland,  in  large  quantities,  for  improving  the 
consistence  of  the  tough  clay  bordering  upon  or  underlying 
diluvial  deposits,  and  for  forming  an  artificial  soil  for  the 
growth  of  certain  garden  and  ornamental  vegetables.  When 
the  dunes  are  removed,  the  ground  they  covered  is  restored  to 
the  domain  of  industry ;  and  the  quantity  of  land,  recovered 
in  the  Netherlands  by  the  removal  of  the  barren  sands  which 
encumbered  it,  amounts  to  hundreds  and  perhaps  thousands  of 
acres,  f 

Inland  Sand  Plains. 

The  inland  sand  plains  of  Europe  are  either  derived  from 
the  drifting  of  dunes  or  other  beach  sands,  or  consist  of  diluvial 
deposits.  As  we  have  seen,  when  once  the  interior  of  a  dune 
is  laid  open  to  the  wind,  its  contents  are  soon  scattered  far  and 
wide  over  the  adjacent  country,  and  the  beach  sands,  no  longer 
checked  by  the  rampart  which  nature  had  constrained  them  to 
build  against  their  own  encroachments,  are  also  carried  to  con- 

*  BOITEL,  Mise  en  valeur  des  Terres  pauxres  par  le  Pin  maritime^  pp. 
212,  218. 

t  See  Appendix,  No. 


510  INLAND    SANDS. 

eiderablc  distances  from  the  coast.  Few  regions  have  suffered 
so  much  from  this  cause  in  proportion  to  their  extent,  as  the 
peninsula  of  Jutland.  So  long  as  the  woods,  with  which  nature 
had  planted  the  Danish  dunes,  w^ere  spared,  they  seem  to  have 
been  stationary,  and  we  have  no  historical  evidence,  of  an  earlier 
date  than  the  sixteenth  century,  that  they  had  become  in  any 
way  injurious.  From  that  period,  there  are  frequent  notices  of 
the  invasions  of  cultivated  grounds  by  the  sands ;  and  excava 
tions  are  constantly  bringing  to  light  proof  of  human  habita 
tion  and  of  agricultural  industry,  in  former  ages,  on  soils  now 
buried  beneath  deep  drifts  from  the  dunes  and  beaches  of  the 
sea  coast.* 

Extensive  tracts  of  valuable  plain  land  in  the  Netherlands 
and  in  France  have  been  covered  in  the  same  way  with  a  layer 
of  sand  deep  enough  to  render  them  infertile,  and  they  can  be 
restored  to  cultivation  only  by  processes  analogous  to  those 
employed  for  fixing  and  improving  the  dunes.f  Diluvial  sand 
plains,  also,  have  been  reclaimed  by  these  methods  in  the 
Duchy  of  Austria,  between  Vienna  and  the  Sernmering  ridge, 
in  Jutland,  and  in  the  great  champaign  country  of  Northern 
Germany,  especially  the  Mark  Brandenburg,  where  artificial 
forests  can  be  propagated  with  great  ease,  and  where,  conse 
quently,  this  branch  of  industry  has  been  pursued  on  a  great 
scale,  and  with  highly  beneficial  results,  both  as  respects  the 
supply  of  forest  products  and  the  preparation  of  the  soil  for 
agricultural  use. 

As  a  general  rule,  inland  sands  are  looser,  dryer,  and  more 
inclined  to  drift,  than  those  of  the  sea  coast,  where  the  moist 
and  saline  atmosphere  of  the  ocean  keeps  them  always  more 
or  less  humid  and  cohesive.  'No  shore  dunes  are  so  movable 
as  the  medanos  of  Peru  described  in  a  passage  quoted  from  Pop- 

*  For  details,  consult  AXDRESEX,  Om  Klitformationen,  pp.  223,  236. 

t  When  the  deposit  is  not  very  deep,  and  the  adjacent  land  lying  to  the 
leeward  of  the  prevailing  winds  is  covered  with  water,  or  otherwise  worth 
less,  the  surface  is  sometimes  freed  from  the  drifts  by  repeated  harrowings, 
which  loosen  the  sand,  so  that  the  wind  takes  it  up  and  transports  it  to 
grounds  where  accumulations  of  it  are  less  injurious. 


THE   L ANDES   OF    GASCON  Y.  511 

pig  on  a  former  page,  or  as  the  sand  hills  of  Poland,  both  of 
which  seem  better  entitled  to  the  appellation  of  sand  waves  than 
those  of  the  Sahara  or  of  the  Arabian  desert.  The  sands  of 
the  valley  of  the  Lower  Euphrates — themselves  probably  of 
submarine  origin,  and  not  derived  from  dimes — are  advancing 
to  the  northwest  with  a  rapidity  which  seems  fabulous  when 
compared  with  the  slow  movement  of  the  sand  hills  of  Gascony 
and  the  Low  German  coasts.  Loftus,  speaking  of  Niliyya,  an 
old  Arab  town  a  few  miles  east  of  the  ruins  of  Babylon,  says 
that,  ic  in  1S4S,  the  sand  began  to  accumulate  around  it,  and  in 
six  years,  the  desert,  within  a  radius  of  six  miles,  was  covered 
with  little,  undulating  domes,  while  the  rains  of  the  city  were 
so  buried  that  it  is  now  impossible  to  trace  their  original  form 
or  extent."  *  Loftus  considers  this  sand  flood  as  the  "  van 
guard  of  those  vast  drifts  which,  advancing  from  the  southeast, 
threaten  eventually  to  overwhelm  Babylon  and  Baghdad." 

An  observation  of  Layard,  cited  by  Loftus,  appears  to  mo 
to  furnish  a  possible  explanation  of  this  irruption.  He  "  passed 
two  or  three  places  where  the  sand,  issuing  from  the  earth 
like  water,  is  called  *  Aioun-er-rummal,'  sand  springs."  These 
"  springs  "  are  very  probably  merely  the  drifting  of  sand  from 
the  ancient  subsoil,  where  the  protecting  crust  of  aquatic  de 
posit  and  vegetable  earth  has  been  broken  through,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  drift  which  arose  from  the  upturning  of  an  oak 
mentioned  on  a  former  page.  When  the  valley  of  the  Eu 
phrates  was  regularly  irrigated  and  cultivated,  the  underlying 
sands  were  bound  by  moisture,  alluvial  slime,  and  vegetation ; 
but  now,  that  all  improvement  is  neglected,  and  the  surface,  no 
longer  watered,  has  become  parched,  powdery,  and  naked,  a 
mere  accidental  fissure  in  the  superficial  stratum  may  soon  be 
enlarged  to  a  wide  opening,  that  will  let  loose  sand  enough  to 
overwhelm  a  province. 

The  Landes  of  Gascony. 

The  most  remarkable  sand  plain  of  France  lies  at  the  south 
western  extremity  of  the  empire,  and  is  generally  known  aa 

*  Travels  and  Researches  in  Chaldaa,  chap.  ix. 


512  THE   LANDES. 

the  Landes,  or  heaths,  of  Gascony.  Clave  thus  describes  it : 
"  Composed  of  pure  sand,  resting  on  an  impermeable  stratum 
called  atios,  the  soil  of  the  Landes  was,  for  centuries,  consid 
ered  incapable  of  cultivation.  Parched  in  summer,  drowned 
in  winter,  it  produced  only  ferns,  rushes,  and  heath,  and 
scarcely  furnished  pasturage  for  a  few  half-starved  flocks.  To 
crown  its  miseries,  this  plain  was  continually  threatened  by  the 
encroachments  of  the  dunes.  Vast  ridges  of  sand,  thrown  up 
by  the  waves,  for  a  distance  of  more  than  fifty  leagues  along 
the  coast,  and  continually  renewed,  were  driven  inland  by  the 
west  wind,  and,  as  they  rolled  over  the  plain,  they  buried  the 
soil  and  the  hamlets,  overcame  all  resistance,  and  advanced 
with  fearful  regularity.  The  whole  province  seemed  devoted 
to  certain  destruction,  when  Bremontier  invented  his  method 
of  fixing  the  dunes  by  plantations  of  the  maritime  pine."  * 

Although  the  Landes  had  been  almost  abandoned  for  ages, 
they  show  numerous  traces  of  ancient  cultivation  and  prosper 
ity,  and  it  is  principally  by  means  of  the  encroachments  of  the 
sands  that  they  have  become  reduced  to  their  present  desolate 
condition.  The  destruction  of  the  coast  towns  and  harbors, 
which  furnished  markets  for  the  products  of  the  plains,  the  dam 
ming  up  of  the  rivers,  and  the  obstruction  of  the  smaller  chan 
nels  of  natural  drainage  by  the  advance  of  the  dunes,  were  no 
doubt  very  influential  causes ;  and  if  we  add  the  drifting  of 
the  sea  sand  over  the  soil,  we  have  at  least  a  partial  explanation 
of  the  decayed  agriculture  and  diminished  population  of  this 
great  waste.  When  the  dunes  were  once  arrested,  and  the 
soil  to  the  east  of  them  was  felt  to  be  secure  against  invasion 
by  them,  experiments,  in  the  way  of  agricultural  improvement, 
by  drainage  and  plantation,  were  commenced,  and  they  have 
been  attended  with  such  signal  success,  that  the  complete  re 
covery  of  one  of  the  dreariest  and  most  extensive  wastes  in 
Europe  may  be  considered  as  both  a  probable  and  a  near 
event.-]- 

*  Etudes  Forestieres,  p.  253. 

t  LAVEEGNE,  jficonomie  Eurale  de  la  France,  p.  300,  estimates  the  area 
of  the  Landes  of  Gascony  at  700,000  hectares,  or  about  1,700,000  acres. 


THE    BELGIAN    CAMPINE — SANDS   OF   EASTERN   EUROPE.       513 

The  Belgian  Campine. 

In  the  northern  part  of  Belgium,  and  extending  across  the 
confines  of  Holland,  is  another  very  similar  heath  plain,  called 
the  Campine.  This  is  a  vast  sand  flat,  interspersed  with 
marshes  and  inland  dunes,  and,  until  recently,  considered 
wholly  incapable  of  cultivation.  Enormous  sums  have  been 
expended  in  reclaiming  it  by  draining  and  other  familiar 
agricultural  processes,  but  without  results  at  all  proportional 
to  the  capital  invested.  In  1849,  the  unimproved  portion  of 
the  Campine  was  estimated  at  little  less  than  three  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  acres.  The  example  of  France  has  prompt 
ed  experiments  in  the  planting  of  trees,  especially  the  maritime 
pine,  upon  this  barren  waste,  and  the  results  have  been  such 
as  to  show  that  its  sands  may  both  be  fixed  and  made  produc 
tive,  not  only  without  loss,  but  with  positive  pecuniary  ad 
vantage.* 

Sands  and  Steppes  of  Eastern  Europe. 

There  are  still  unsubdued  sand  wastes  in  many  parts  of  in 
terior  Europe  not  familiarly  known  to  tourists  or  even  geo 
graphers.  "  Olkucz  and  Schiewier  in  Poland,"  says  JSTaumann, 

The  same  author  states  (p.  304),  that  when  the  Moors  were  driven  from 
Spain  by  the  blind  cupidity  and  brutal  intolerance  of  the  age,  they  de 
manded  permission  to  establish  themselves  in  this  desert ;  but  political 
and  religious  prejudices  prevented  the  granting  of  this  liberty.  At  this 
period  the  Moors  were  a  far  more  cultivated  people  than  their  Christian 
persecutors,  and  they  had  carried  many  arts,  that  of  agriculture  especially, 
to  a  higher  pitch  than  any  other  European  nation.  But  France  was  not 
wise  enough  to  accept  what  Spain  had  cast  out,  and  the  Landes  remained 
a  waste  for  three  centuries  longer.  See  Appendix,  No. 

The  forest  of  Fontainebleau,  which  contains  above  40,000  acres,  is  not 
a  plain,  but  its  soil  is  composed  almost  wholly  of  sand,  interspersed  with 
ledges  of  rock.  The  sand  forms  not  less  than  ninety-eight  per  cent,  of  the 
earth,  and,  as  it  is  almost  without  water,  it  would  be  a  drifting  desert  but 
for  the  artificial  propagation  of  forest  trees  upon  it. 

*  Economic  Rurale  de  la  Belgique,  par  EMILE  DE  LAVELEYE,  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,  Juin,  1861,  pp.  617-644. 
33 


514  STEPPES    OF   RUSSIA 

"  lie  in  true  sand  deserts,  and  a  boundless  plain  of  sand  stretches 
around  Ozeiistoekau,  on  which  there  grows  neither  tree  nor 
shrub.  In  heavy  winds,  this  plain  resembles  a  rolling  sea,  and 
the  sand  hills  rise  and  disappear  like  the  waves  of  the  ocean. 
The  heaps  of  waste  from  the  Olkucz  mines  are  covered  with 
sand  to  the  depth  of  four  fathoms."  *  No  attempts  have  yet 
been  made  to  subdue  the  sands  of  Poland,  but  when  peace  and 
prosperity  shall  be  restored  to  that  unhappy  country,  there  is 
no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  measures,  which  have  proved  so 
successful  on  similar  formations  in  Germany,  may  be  employed 
with  advantage  in  the  Polish  deserts. 

There  are  sand  drifts  in  parts  of  the  steppes  of  Russia,  bnt 
in  general  the  soil  of  those  vast  plains  is  of  a  different,  though 
very  varied,  composition,  and  is  covered  with  vegetation.  The 
steppes,  however,  have  many  points  of  analogy  with  the  sand 
plains  of  Northern  Germany,  and  if  they  are  ever  fitted  for 
civilized  occupation,  it  must  be  by  the  same  means,  that  is,  by 
planting  forests.  It  is  disputed  whether  the  steppes  were  ever 
wooded.  They  were  certainly  bare  of  forest  growth  at  a  very 
remote  period  ;  for  Herodotus  describes  the  country  of  the 
Scythians  between  the  Ister  and  the  Tanais  as  woodless,  with 
the  exception  of  the  small  province  of  Xylsea  between  the 
Dnieper  and  the  Gnlf  of  Perekop.  They  are  known  to  have 
been  occupied  by  a  large  nomade  and  pastoral  population  down 
to  the  sixteenth  century,  though  these  tribes  are  now  much  re 
duced  in  numbers.  The  habits  of  such  races  are  scarcely  less 
destructive  to  the  forest  than  those  of  civilized  life.  Pastoral 
tribes  do  not  employ  much  wood  for  fuel  or  for  construction, 
but  they  carelessly  or  recklessly  burn  down  the  forests,  and 
their  cattle  effectually  check  the  growth  of  young  trees  wher 
ever  their  range  extends. 

At  present,  the  furious  winds  which  sweep  over  the  plains, 
the  droughts  of  summer,  and  the  rights  and  abuses  of  pasturage, 
constitute  very  formidable  obstacles  to  the  employment  of 
measures  which  have  been  attended  with  so  valuable  results  on 
the  sand  wastes  of  France  and  Germany.  The  Russian  Gov- 

*  Greognosie,  ii,  p.  1173. 


BENEFITS    OF    PLANTING.  515 

ernmeut  lias,  however,  attempted  the  wooding  of  the  steppes,  and 
there  are  thriving  plantations  in  the  neighborhood  of  Odessa, 
where  the  soil  is  of  a  particularly  loose  and  sandy  character.* 
The  trees  best  suited  to  this  locality,  and,  as  there  is  good  rea 
son  to  suppose,  to  sand  plains  in  general,  is  the  Ailanthus 
glandulosa,  or  Japan  varnish  tree.f  The  remarkable  success 
which  has  crowned  the  experiments  with  the  ailanthus  at 
Odessa,  will,  no  doubt,  stimulate  to  similar  trials  elsewhere, 
and  it  seems  not  improbable  that  the  arundo  and  the  maritime 
pine,  which  have  fixed  so  many  thousand  acres  of  drifting 
sands  in  Western  Europe,  will  be,  partially  at  least,  superseded 
by  the  tamarisk  and  the  varnish  tree. 

Advantages  of  declaiming  the  /Sands. 

If  we  consider  the  quantity  of  waste  land  which  has  been 
made  productive  by  the  planting  of  the  sand  hills  and  plains, 
and  the  extent  of  fertile  soil,  the  number  of  villages  and  other 
human  improvements,  and  the  value  of  the  harbors,  which  the 
same  process  has  saved  from  being  buried  under  the  rolling 
dunes,  and  at  last  swallowed  up  forever  by  the  invasions  of  the 
sea,  we  shall  be  inclined  to  rank  Bremontier  and  Reventlov 
among  the  greatest  benefactors  of  their  race.  With  the  excep- 

*  According  to  HOHEXSTEIN,  Dcr  Wald,  pp.  228,  229,  an  extensive  plan 
tation  of  pines — a  tree  new  to  Southern  Russia — was  commenced  in  1842, 
on  the  barren  and  sandy  banks  of  the  Ingula,  near  Elisabethgrod,  and  has 
met  with  very  flattering  success.  Other  experiments  in  sylviculture  at  dif 
ferent  points  on  the  steppes  promise  valuable  results. 

t  "  Sixteen  years  ago,"  says  an  Odessa  landholder,  "  I  attempted  to  fix 
the  sand  of  the  steppes,  which  covers  the  rocky  ground  to  the  depth  of  a 
foot,  and  forms  moving  hillocks  with  every  change  of  wind.  I  tried 
acacias  and  pines  in  vain ;  nothing  would  grow  in  such  a  soil.  At  length 
I  planted  the  varnish  tree,  or  ailanthus,  which  succeeded  completely  in 
binding  the  sand.1'  This  result  encouraged  the  proprietor  to  extend  his 
plantations  over  both  dunes  and  sand  steppes,  and  in  the  course  of  sixteen 
years  this  rapidly  growing  tree  had  formed  real  forests.  Other  landowners 
have  imitated  his  example  with  great  advantage.— EENTSCH,  Der  Wald,  p. 
44,45. 


516  GOVERNMENT   WOEKS. 

tion  of  the  dikes  of  the  Netherlands,  their  labors  are  the  first 
deliberate  and  direct  attempts  of  man  to  make  himself,  on  a 
great  scale,  a  geographical  power,  to  restore  natural  balances 
which  earlier  generations  had  disturbed,  and  to  atone,  by  acts 
guided  by  foreseeing  and  settled  purpose,  for  the  waste  which 
thoughtless  improvidence  had  created. 

Government  Works. 

There  is  an  important  political  difference  bet  ween  these  lat 
ter  works  and  the  diking  system  of  the  Netherlandish  and 
German  coasts.  The  dikes  originally  were,  and  in  modern 
times  very  generally  have  been,  private  enterprises,  undertaken 
with  no  other  aim  than  to  add  a  certain  quantity  of  cultivable 
soil  to  the  former  possessions  of  their  proprietor,  or  sometimes 
of  the  state.  In  short,  with  few  exceptions,  they  have  been 
merely  a  pecuniary  investment,  a  mode  of  acquiring  land  not 
economically  different  from  purchase.  The  planting  of  the 
dunes,  on  the  contrary,  has  always  been  a  public  work,  executed^ 
not  with  the  expectation  of  reaping  a  regular  direct  percentage 
of  income  from  the  expenditure,  but  dictated  by  higher  views 
of  state  economy — by  the  same  governmental  principles,  in 
fact,  which  animate  all  commonwealths  in  repelling  invasion 
by  hostile  armies,  or  in  repairing  the  damages  that  invading 
forces  may  have  inflicted  on  the  general  interests  of  the  people. 
The  restoration  of  the  forests  in  the  southern  part  of  France, 
as  now  conducted  by  the  Government  of  that  empire,  is  a 
measure  of  the  same  elevated  character  as  the  fixing  of  the 
dunes.  In  former  ages,  forests  were  formed  or  protected  sim 
ply  for  the  sake  of  the  shelter  they  afforded  to  game,  or  for 
the  timber  they  yielded  ;  but  the  recent  legislation  of  France, 
and  of  some  other  Continental  countries,  on  this  subject,  looks 
to  more  distant  as  well  as  nobler  ends,  and  these  are  among 
the  public  acts  which  most  strongly  encourage  the  hope  that 
the  rulers  of  Christendom  are  coming  better  to  understand  the 
true  duties  and  interests  of  civilized  government. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

PROJECTED  OR  POSSIBLE  GEOGRAPHICAL  CHANGES  BY  MAX. 

CUTTING  OF  MARINE  ISTHMUSES — THE  SUEZ  CANAL — CANAL  ACROSS  ISTHMUS 
OF  DARIEN — CANALS  TO  THE  DEAD  SEA — MARITIME  CANALS  IN  GREECE — 
CANAL  OF  SAROS — CAPE  COD  CANAL — DIVERSION  OF  THE  NILE — CHANGES 
IN  THE  CASPIAN — IMPROVEMENTS  IN  NORTH  AMERICAN  HYDROGRAPHY — DI 
VERSION  OF  RHINE— DRAINING  OF  THE  ZUIDERZEE WATERS  OF  THE  KARST 

SUBTERRANEAN  "WATERS  OF  GREECE — SOIL  BELOW  ROCK — COVERING  ROCKS 

WITH  EARTH — WADIES  OF  ARABIA  PKTR.EA INCIDENTAL  EFFECTS  OF  HUMAN 

ACTION — RESISTANCE    TO    GREAT    NATURAL    FORCES — EFFECTS     OF    MINING 

ESPY'S  THEORIES — RIVER   SEDIMENT — NOTHING   SMALL   IN  NATURE. 

Cutting  of  Marine  Isthmuses. 

BESIDES  the  great  enterprises  of  physical  transformation  of 
which  I  have  already  spoken,  other  works  of  internal  improve 
ment  or  change  have  been  projected  in  ancient  and  modern 
times,  the  execution  of  which  would  produce  considerable,  and, 
in  some  cases,  extremely  important,  revolutions  in  the  face  of 
the  earth.  Some  of  the  schemes  to  which  I  refer  are  evidently 
chimerical ;  others  are  difficult,  indeed,  but  cannot  be  said  to 
be  impracticable,  though  discouraged  by  the  apprehension  of 
disastrous  consequences  from  the  disturbance  of  existing  natu 
ral  or  artificial  arrangements  ;  and  there  are  still  others,  the 
accomplishment  of  which  is  ultimately  certain,  though  for  the 
present  forbidden  by  economical  considerations. 

When  we  consider  the  number  of  narrow  necks  or  isthmuses 
which  separate  gulfs  and  bays  of  the  sea  from  each  other,  or 
from  the  main  ocean,  and  take  into  account  the  time  and  cost, 


518  CUTTING   OF    ISTHMUSES. 

and  risks  of  navigation  which  would  be  saved  by  executing 
channels  to  connect  such  waters,  and  thus  avoiding  the  neces 
sity  of  doubling  long  capes  and  promontories,  or  even  conti 
nents,  it  seems  strange  that  more  of  the  enterprise  and  money 
which  have  been  so  lavishly  expended  in  forming  artificial 
rivers  for  internal  navigation  should  not  have  been  bestowed 

O 

upon  the  construction  of  maritime  canals.  Many  such  have 
been  projected  in  early  and  in  recent  ages,  and  some  trifling 
cuts  between  marine  waters  have  been  actually  made,  but  no 
work  of  this  sort,  possessing  real  geographical  or  even  commer 
cial  importance,  has  yet  been  effected. 

These  enterprises  are  attended  with  difficulties  and  open  to 
objections,  which  are  not,  at  first  sight,  obvious.  Nature 
guards  well  the  chains  by  which  she  connects  promontories 
with  mainlands,  and  binds  continents  together.  Isthmuses  are 
usually  composed  of  adamantine  rock  or  of  shifting  sands — 
the  latter  being  much  the  more  refractory  material  to  deal 
with.  In  all  such  works  there  is  a  necessity  for  deep  excava 
tion  below  low-water  mark — always  a  matter  of  great  difficulty  ; 
the  dimensions  of  channels  for  sea-going  ships  must  be  much 
greater  than  those  of  canals  of  inland  navigation ;  the  height 
of  the  masts  or  smoke  pipes  of  that  class  of  vessels  would 
often  render  bridging  impossible,  and  thus  a  ship  canal  might 
obstruct  a  communication  more  important  than  that  which  it 
was  intended  to  promote ;  the  securing  of  the  entrances  of 
marine  canals  and  the  construction  of  ports  at  their  termini 
would  in  general  be  difficult  and  expensive,  and  the  harbors 
and  the  channel  which  connected  them  would  be  extremely 
liable  to  fill  up  by  deposits  washed  in  from  sea  and  shore. 
Besides  all  this,  there  is,  in  many  cases,  an  alarming  uncer 
tainty  as  to  the  effects  of  joining  together  waters  which  nature 
has  put  asunder.  A  new  channel  may  deflect  strong  currents 
from  safe  courses,  and  thus  occasion  destructive  erosion  of  shores 
otherwise  secure ,  or  promote  the  transportation  of  sand  or  slime 
to  block  up  important  harbors,  or  it  may  furnish  a  powerful 
enemy  with  dangerous  facilities  for  hostile  operations  along  the 
coast. 


THE    SUEZ   CANAL.  519 

Nature  sometimes  mocks  the  cunning  and  the  power  of  man 
by  spontaneously  performing,  for  his  benefit,  works  which  he 
shrinks  from  undertaking,  and  the  execution  of  which  by  him 
she  would  resist  with  unconquerable  obstinacy.  A  dangerous 
sand  bank,  that  all  the  enginery  of  the  world  could  not  dredge 
out  in  a  generation,  may  be  carried  off  in  a  night  by  a  strong 
river  flood,  or  a  current  impelled  by  a  violent  wind  from  an 
unusual  quarter,  and  a  passage  scarcely  navigable  by  fishing 
boats  may  be  thus  converted  into  a  commodious  channel  for 
the  largest  ship  that  floats  upon  the  ocean.  In  the  remarkable 
gulf  of  Liimfjord  in  Jutland,  nature  has  given  a  singular  ex 
ample  of  a  canal  which  she  alternately  opens  as  a  marine  strait, 
and,  by  shutting  again,  converts  into  a  fresh-water  lagoon. 
The  Liimfjord  was  doubtless  originally  an  open  channel  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Baltic  between  two  islands,  but  the  sand 
washed  up  by  the  sea  blocked  up  the  western  entrance,  and 
built  a  wall  of  dunes  to  close  it  more  firmly.  This  natural 
dike,  as  we  have  seen,  has  been  more  than  once  broken  through, 
and  it  is  perhaps  in  the  power  of  man,  either  permanently  to 
maintain  the  barrier,  or  to  remove  it  and  keep  a  navigable 
channel  constantly  open.  If  the  Liimfjord  becomes  an  open 
strait,  the  washing  of  sea  sand  through  it  would  perhaps  block 
up  some  of  the  belts  and  small  channels  now  important  for  the 
navigation  of  the  Baltic,  and  the  direct  introduction  of  a  tidal 

O  ' 

current  might  produce  very  perceptible  effects  on  the  hydro 
graphy  of  the  Cattegat. 

The  Suez  Canal. 

If  the  Suez  Canal — the  greatest  and  most  truly  cosmopolite 
physical  improvement  ever  undertaken  by  man — shall  prove 
successful,  it  will  considerably  affect  the  basins  of  the  Mediter 
ranean  and  of  the  Red  Sea,  though  in  a  different  manner,  and 
probably  in  a  less  degree  than  the  diversion  of  the  current  of  the 
Kile  from  the  one  to  the  other — to  which  I  shall  presently  re 
fer — would  do.  It  is,  indeed,  conceivable,  that  if  a  free  chan 
nel  be  once  cut  from  sea  to  sea,  the  coincidence  of  a  high  tide 
and  a  heavy  south  wind  might  produce  a  hydraulic  force 


520  THE    SUEZ    CANAL. 

that  would  convert  the  narrow  canal  into  an  open  strait.  In 
such  a  case,  it  is  impossible  to  estimate,  or  even  to  foresee,  the 
consequences  which  might  result  from  the  unobstructed  ming 
ling  of  the  flowing  and  ebbing  currents  of  the  Red  Sea  with 
the  almost  tideless  waters  of  the  Mediterranean.  There  can  be 
no  doubt,  however,  that  they  would  be  of  a  most  important 
character  as  respects  the  simply  geographical  features  and  the 
organic  life  of  both.  But  the  shallowness  of  the  two  seas  at 

O 

the  termini  of  the  canal,  the  action  of  the  tides  of  the  one  and 
the  currents  of  the  other,  and  the  nature  of  the  intervening  isth 
mus,  render  the  occurrence  of  such  a  cataclysm  in  the  highest 
degree  improbable.  The  obstruction  of  the  canal  by  sea  sand 
at  both  ends  is  a  danger  far  more  difficult  to  guard  against  and 
avert,  than  an  irruption  of  the  waters  of  either  sea. 

There  is,  then,  no  reason  to  expect  any  change  of  coast 
lines  or  of  natural  navigable  channels  as  a  direct  consequence 
of  the  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal,  but  it  will,  no  doubt,  produce 
very  interesting  revolutions  in  the  animal  and  vegetable  popu 
lation  of  both  basins.  The  Mediterranean,  with  some  local 
exceptions — such  as  the  bays  of  Calabria,  and  the  coast  of 
Sicily  so  picturesquely  described  by  Quatrefages* — is  com 
paratively  poor  in  marine  vegetation,  and  in  shell  as  well  as 
in  fin  fish.  The  scarcity  of  fish  in  some  of  its  gulfs  is  prover 
bial,  and  you  may  scrutinize  long  stretches  of  beach  on  its 
northern  shores,  after  every  south  wind  for  a  whole  winter, 
without  finding  a  dozen  shells  to  reward  your  search.  But  no 
one  who  has  not  looked  down  into  tropical  or  subtropical  seas 
can  conceive  the  amazing  wealth  of  the  Red  Sea  in  organic 
life.  Its  bottom  is  carpeted  or  paved  with  marine  plants,  with 
zoophytes  and  with  shells,  while  its  wTaters  are  teeming  with 
infinitely  varied  forms  of  moving  life.  Most  of  its  vegetables 
and  its  animals,  no  doubt,  are  confined  by  the  laws  of  their  or 
ganization  to  warmer  temperatures  than  that  of  the  Mediter 
ranean,  but  among  them  there  must  be  many,  whose  habitat 
is  of  a  wider  range,  many  whose  powers  of  accommodation 
would  enable  them  to  acclimate  themselves  in  a  colder  sea. 

*  Souvenirs  (Tun  Naturaliste,  i,  pp.  204  et  seqq. 


THE   SUEZ   CANAL.  521 

"We  may  suppose  the  less  numerous  aquatic  fauna  and  flora 
of  the  Mediterranean  to  be  equally  capable  of  climatic  adapta 
tion,  and  hence,  when  the  canal  shall  be  opened,  there  will  be 
an  interchange  of  the  organic  population  not  already  common 
to  both  seas.  Destructive  species,  thus  newly  introduced,  may 
diminish  the  numbers  of  their  proper  prey  in  either  basin,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  increased  supply  of  appropriate  food 
may  greatly  multiply  the  abundance  of  others,  and  at  the  same 
time  add  important  contributions  to  the  aliment  of  man  in  the 
countries  bordering  on  the  Mediterranean. 

A  collateral  feature  of  this  great  project  deserves  notice  as 
possessing  no  inconsiderable  geographical  importance.  I  refer 
to  the  conduit  or  conduits  constructed  from  the  Nile  to  the 
isthmus,  primarily  to  supply  fresh  water  to  the  laborers  on  the 
great  canal,  and  ultimately  to  serve  as  aqueducts  for  the  city 
of  Suez,  and  for  the  irrigation  and  reclamation  of  a  large  ex 
tent  of  desert  soil.  In  the  flourishing  days  of  the  Egyptian 
empire,  the  waters  of  the  Nile  were  carried  over  important 
districts  east  of  the  river.  In  later  ages,  most  of  this  territory 
relapsed  into  a  desert,  from  the  decay  of  the  canals  which 
once  fertilized  it.  There  is  no  difficulty  in  restoring  the  ancient 
channels,  or  in  constructing  new,  and  thus  watering  not  only 
all  the  soil  that  the  wisdom  of  the  Pharaohs  had  improved,  but 
much  additional  land.  Hundreds  of  square  miles  of  arid  sand 
waste  would  thus  be  converted  into  fields  of  perennial  verdure, 
and  the  geography  of  Lower  Egypt  would  be  thereby  sensibly 
changed.  If  the  canal  succeeds,  considerable  towns  will  grow 
up  at  once  at  both  ends  of  the  channel,  and  at  intermediate 
points,  all  depending  on  the  maintenance  of  aqueducts  from 
the  Nile,  both  for  water  and  for  the  irrigation  of  the  neigh 
boring  fields  which  are  to  supply  them  with  bread.  Important 
interests  will  thus  be  created,  which  will  secure  the  permanence 
of  the  hydraulic  works  and  of  the  geographical  changes  pro 
duced  by  them,  and  Suez,  or  Port  Said,  or  the  city  at  Lake 
Timsah,  may  become  the  capital  of  the  government  which  has 
been  so  long  established  at  Cairo. 


522  CANAL    ACROSS    THE   ISTHMUS    OF    DARIEN. 

Canal  across  the  Isthmus  of  Darien. 

The  most  colossal  project  of  canalization  ever  suggested, 
whether  we  consider  the  physical  difficulties  of  its  execution, 
the  magnitude  and  importance  of  the  waters  proposed  to  be 
united,  or  the  distance  which  would  be  saved  in  navigation,  is 
that  of  a  channel  between  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  Pacific, 
across  the  Isthmus  of  Darien.  I  do  not  now  speak  of  a  lock 
canal,  by  way  of  the  Lake  of  Nicaragua  or  any  other  route — • 
for  such  a  work  would  not  differ  essentially  from  other  canals, 
and  would  scarcely  possess  a  geographical  character — but  of  an 
open  cut  between  the  two  seas.  It  has  been  by  no  means  shown 
that  the  construction  of  such  a  channel  is  possible,  and,  if  it 
were  opened,  it  is  highly  probable  that  sand  bars  would  accu 
mulate  at  both  entrances,  so  as  to  obstruct  any  powerful  cur 
rent  through  it.  But  if  we  suppose  the  work  to  be  actually 
accomplished,  there  would  be,  in  the  first  place,  such  a  mixture 
of  the  animal  and  vegetable  life  of  the  two  great  oceans  as  I 
have  stated  to  be  likely  to  result  from  the  opening  of  the  Suez 
Canal  between  two  much  smaller  basins.  In  the  next  place, 
if  the  channel  were  not  obstructed  by  sandbars,  it  might  sooner 
or  later  be  greatly  widened  and  deepened  by  the  mechanical 
action  of  the  current  through  it,  and  consequences,  not  inferior 
in  magnitude  to  any  physical  revolution  which  has  taken  place 
since  man  appeared  upon  the  earth,  might  result  from  it. 

What  those  consequences  would  be  is  in  a  great  degree 
matter  of  pure  conjecture,  and  there  is  much  room  for  the  ex 
ercise  of  the  imagination  on  the  subject ;  but,  as  more  than  one 
geographer  has  suggested,  there  is  one  possible  result  which 
throws  all  other  conceivable  effects  of  such  a  work  quite  into  the 
shade.  I  refer  to  changes  in  the  course  of  the  two  great  oceanic 
>  rivers,  the  Gulf  Stream  and  the  corresponding  current  on  the 
Pacific  side  of  the  isthmus.  The  warm  waters  which  the  Gulf 
Stream  transports  to  high  latitudes  and  then  spreads  out,  like 
an  expanded  hand,  along  the  eastern  shores  of  the  Atlantic, 
give  out,  as  they  cool,  heat  enough  to  raise  the  mean  tempera 
ture  of  "Western  Europe  several  degrees.  In  fact,  the  Gulf 


CANAL   ACROSS   THE   ISTHMUS   OF   DAKIP^N.  523 

Stream  is  the  principal  cause  of  the  superiority  of  the  climate 
of  Western  Europe  over  those  of  Eastern  America  and  Eastern 
Asia  in  the  corresponding  latitudes.  All  the  meteorological 
conditions  of  the  former  region  are  in  a  great  measure  regulated 
by  it,  and  hence  it  is  the  grandest  and  most  beneficent  of  all 
purely  geographical  phenomena.  We  do  not  yet  know  enough 
of  the  laws  which  govern  the  movements  of  this  mighty  flood 
of  warmth  and  life  to  be  able  to  say  whether  its  current  would 
be  perceptibly  affected  by  the  severance  of  the  Isthmus  of 
Darien  ;  but  as  it  enters  and  sweeps  round  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
it  is  possible  that  the  removal  of  the  resistance  of  the  land 
which  forms  the  western  shore  of  that  sea,  might  allow  the 
stream  to  maintain  its  original  westward  direction,  and  join 
itself  to  the  tropical  current  of  the  Pacific. 

The  effect  of  such  a  change  would  be  an  immediate  depres 
sion  of  the  mean  temperature  of  Western  Europe  to  the  level 
of  that  of  Eastern  America,  and  perhaps  the  climate  of  the 
former  continent  might  become  as  excessive  as  that  of  the 
latter,  or  even  a  new  "ice  period"  be  occasioned  by  the  with 
drawal  of  so  important  a  source  of  warmth  from  the  northern 
zones.  Hence  would  result  the  extinction  of  vast  multitudes 
of  land  and  sea  plants  and  animals,  and  a  total  revolution  in 
the  domestic  and  rural  economy  of  human  life  in  all  those 
countries  from  which  the  ~New  World  has  received  its  civilized 
population.  Other  scarcely  less  startling  consequences  may  be 
imagined  as  possible  ;  but  the  whole  speculation  is  too  dreary, 
distant,  and  improbable  to  deserve  to  be  long  indulged  in.* 

*  "  If  we  suppose  the  narrow  isthmus  of  Central  America  to  be  sunk  in 
the  ocean,  the  warm  equatorial  current  would  no  longer  follow  its  circuitous 
route  around  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  but  pour  itself  through  the  new  opening 
directly  into  the  Pacific.  "We  should  then  lose  the  warmth  of  the  Gulf 
Stream,  and  cold  polar  currents  flowing  farther  southward  would  take  its 
place  and  be  driven  upon  our  coasts  by  the  western  winds.  The  North 
Sea  would  resemble  Hudson's  Bay,  and  its  harbors  be  free  from  ice  at  best 
only  in  summer.  The  power  and  prosperity  of  its  coasts  would  shrivel  under 
the  breath  of  winter,  as  a  medusa  thrown  on  shore  shrinks  to  an  insig 
nificant  film  under  the  influence  of  the  destructive  atmosphere.  Com 
merce,  industry,  fertility  of  soil,  population,  would  disappear,  and  the  vast 


524:  CANALS   TO    THE   DEAD    SEA. 

Canals  to  the  Dead  Sea. 

The  project  of  Captain  Allen  for  opening  a  new  route  to 
India  by  cuts  between  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Dead  Sea, 
and  between  the  Dead  Sea  and  the  Red  Sea,  presents  many 
interesting  considerations.*  The  hypsometrical  observations 
of  Bertou,  Roth,  and  others,  render  it  highly  probable,  if 
not  certain,  that  the  watershed  in  the  Wadi-el-Araba  between 
the  Dead  Sea  and  the  Red  Sea  is  not  less  than  three  hundred 
feet  above  the  mean  level  of  the  latter,  and  if  this  is  so,  the 
execution  of  a  canal  from  the  one  sea  to  the  other  is  quite  out 
of  the  question.  But  the  summit  level  between  the  Mediter 
ranean  and  the  Jordan,  near  Jezreel,  is  believed  to  be  little,  if 
at  all,  more  than  one  hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  and  the  dis 
tance  is  so  short  that  the  cutting  of  a  channel  through  the 
dividing  ridge  would  probably  be  found  by  no  means  an  im 
practicable  undertaking.  Although,  therefore,  we  have  no 
reason  to  believe  it  possible  to  open  a  navigable  channel  to  the 
east  by  way  of  the  Dead  Sea,  there  is  not  much -doubt  that  the 
basin  of  the  latter  might  be  made  accessible  from  the  Mediter 
ranean. 

The  level  of  the  Dead  Sea  lies  1,316.7  feet  below  that  of 
the  ocean.  It  is  bounded  east  and  west  by  mountain  ridges, 
rising  to  the  height  of  from  2,000  to  4,000  feet  above  the 
ocean.  From  its  southern  end,  a  depression  called  the  "Wadi- 
el-Araba  extends  to  the  Gulf  of  Akaba,  the  eastern  arm  of  the 
Red  Sea.  The  Jordan  empties  into  its  northern  extremity, 
after  having  passed  through  the  Lake  of  Tiberias  at  an  eleva 
tion  of  663.4  feet  above  the  Dead  Sea,  or  653.3  below  the  Med 
iterranean,  and  drains  a  considerable  valley  north  of  the  lake, 
as  well  as  the  plain  of  Jericho,  which  lies  between  the  lake 
and  the  sea.  If  the  waters  of  the  Mediterranean  were  admitted 

waste — a  new  Labrador — would  become  a  worthless  appendage  of  some 
clime  more  favored  by  nature." — HABTWIG,  Das  Lebcn  des  Meercs,  p.  70. 

*  I  know  nothing  of  Captain  Allen's  work  but  its  title  and  its  subject. 
Very  probably  he  may  have  anticipated  many  of  the  following  speculations, 
and  thrown  light  on  points  upon  which  I  am  ignorant. 


CANALS   TO   THE   DEAD    SEA.  525 

freely  into  the  basin  of  the  Dead  Sea,  they  would  raise  its  sur 
face  to  the  general  level  of  the  ocean,  and  consequently  flood 
all  the  dry  land  below  that  level  within  the  basin. 

I  do  not  know  that  accurate  levels  have  been  taken  in  the 
valley  of  the  Jordan  above  the  Lake  of  Tiberias,  and  our  infor 
mation  is  very  vague  as  to  the  hypsometry  of  the  northern 
part  of  the  Wadi-el-Araba.  As  little  do  we  know  where  a 
contour  line,  carried  around  the  basin  at  the  level  of  the  Medi 
terranean,  would  strike  its  eastern  and  western  borders.  "We 
cannot,  therefore,  accurately  compute  the  extent  of  now  dry 
land  which  would  be  covered  by  the  admission  of  the  waters 
of  the  Mediterranean,  or  the  area  of  the  inland  sea  which 
would  be  thus  created.  Its  length,  however,  would  certainly 
exceed  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  and  its  mean  breadth,  in 
cluding  its  gulfs  and  bays,  could  scarcely  be  less  than  fifteen, 
perhaps  even  twenty.  It  would  cover  very  little  ground  now 
occupied  by  civilized  or  even  uncivilized  man,  though  some  of 
the  soil  which  would  be  submerged — for  instance,  that  watered 
by  the  Fountain  of  Elisha  and  other  neighboring  sources — is  of 
great  fertility,  and,  under  a  wiser  government  and  better  civil 
institutions,  might  rise  to  importance,  because,  from  its  depree 
sion,  it  possesses  a  very  warm  climate,  and  might  supply  South 
eastern  Europe  with  tropical  products  more  readily  than  they 
can  be  obtained  from  any  other  source.  Such  a  canal  and  sea 
would  be  of  no  present  commercial  importance,  because  they 
would  give  access  to  no  new  markets  or  sources  of  supply  ;  but 
when  the  fertile  valleys  and  the  deserted  plains  east  of  the 
Jordan  shall  be  reclaimed  to  agriculture  and  civilization,  these 
waters  would  furnish  a  channel  of  communication  which  might 
become  the  medium  of  a  very  extensive  trade. 

Whatever  might  be  the  economical  results  of  the  opening 
and  filling  of  the  Dead  Sea  basin,  the  creation  of  a  new  e vap 
or  able  area,  adding  not  less  than  2,000  or  perhaps  3,000  square 
miles  to  the  present  fluid  surface  of  Syria,  could  not  fail  to 
produce  important  meteorological  effects.  The  climate  of 
Syria  would  be  tempered,  its  precipitation  and  its  fertility  in 
creased,  the  courses  of  its  winds  and  the  electrical  condition 


526  CANAL   ACROSS   ISTHMUS    OF   CORINTH. 

of  its  atmosphere  modified.  The  present  organic  life  of  the 
valley  would  be  extinguished,  and  many  tribes  of  plants 
and  animals  would  emigrate  from  the  Mediterranean  to  the 
new  home  which  human  art  had  prepared  for  them.  It  is 
possible,  too,  that  the  addition  of  1,300  feet,  or  forty  atmo 
spheres,  of  hydrostatic  pressure  upon  the  bottom  of  the  basin 
might  disturb  the  equilibrium  between  the  internal  and  the 
external  forces  of  the  crust  of  the  earth  at  this  point  of  abnor 
mal  configuration,  and  thus  produce  geological  convulsions  the 
intensity  of  which  cannot  be  even  conjectured. 

Maritime  Canals  in  Greece. 

A  maritime  canal  executed  and  another  projected  in  an 
cient  times,  the  latter  of  which  is  again  beginning  to  excite 
attention,  deserve  some  notice,  though  their  importance  is  of  a 
commercial  rather  than  a  geographical  character.  The  first 
of  these  is  the  cut  made  by  Xerxes  through  the  rock  which 
connects  the  promontory  of  Mount  Athos  with  the  mainland  ; 
the  other,  a  navigable  canal  through  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth. 
In  spite  of  the  testimony  of  Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  the 
Romans  classed  the  canal  of  Xerxes  among  the  fables  of  "  men 
dacious  Greece,"  and  yet  traces  of  it  are  perfectly  distinct  at 
the  present  day  through  its  whole  extent,  except  at  a  single 
point  where,  after  it  had  become  so  choked  as  to  be  no  longer 
navigable,  it  was  probably  filled  up  to  facilitate  communica 
tion  by  land  between  the  promontory  and  the  country  in  the 
rear  of  it. 

If  the  fancy  kingdom  of  Greece  shall  ever  become  a  sober 
reality,  escape  from  its  tutelage  and  acquire  such  a  moral  as 
well  as  political  status  that  its  own  capitalists — who  now  pre 
fer  to  establish  themselves  and  employ  their  funds  anywhere 
else  rather  than  in  their  native  land — have  any  confidence  in 
the  permanency  of  its  institutions,  a  navigable  channel  will  no 
doubt  be  opened  between  the  gulfs  of  Lepanto  and  ^Egina 
The  annexation  of  the  Ionian  Islands  to  Greece  will  make  such 
a  work  almost  a  political  necessity,  and  it  would  not  only  fur- 


CANAL   OF   GALLIPOLI.  527 

nish  valuable  facilities  for  domestic  intercourse,  but  become  an 
important  channel  of  communication  between  the  Levant  and 
the  countries  bordering  on  the  Adriatic,  or  conducting  their 
trade  through  that  sea. 

As  I  have  said,  the  importance  of  this  latter  canal  and  of  a 
navigable  channel  between  Mount  Athos  and  the  continent 
would  be  chiefly  commercial,  but  both  of  them  would  be  con 
spicuous  instances  of  the  control  of  man  over  nature  in  a  field 
where  he  has  thus  far  done  little  to  interfere  with  her  sponta 
neous  arrangements.  If  they  were  constructed  upon  such  a 
scale  as  to  admit  of  the  free  passage  of  the  water  through 
them,  in  either  direction,  as  the  prevailing  winds  should  impel 
it,  they  would  exercise  a  certain  influence  on  the  coast  cur 
rents,  which  are  important  as  hydrographical  elements,  and 
also  as  producing  abrasion  of  the  coast  and  a  drift  at  the  bot 
tom  of  seas,  and  hence  would  be  entitled  to  a  higher  rank  than 
simply  as  artificial  means  of  transit. 

Canal  of  Saros. 

It  has  been  thought  practicable  to  cut  a  canal  across  the 
peninsula  of  Gallipoli  from  the  outlet  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora 
into  the  Gulf  of  Saros.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  the  mechan 
ical  difficulties  of  such  a  work  would  not  be  found  insuperable ; 
but  when  Constantinople  shall  recover  the  important  political 
and  commercial  rank  which  naturally  belongs  to  her,  the  exe 
cution  of  such  a  canal  will  be  recommended  by  strong  reasons 
of  military  expediency,  as  well  as  by  the  interests  of  trade. 
An  open  channel  across  the  peninsula  would  divert  a  portion 
of  the  water  which  now  flows  through  the  Dardanelles,  dimin 
ish  the  rapidity  of  that  powerful  current,  and  thus  in  part  re 
move  the  difficulties  which  obstruct  the  navigation  of  the 
strait.  It  would  considerably  abridge  the  distance  by  water 
between  Constantinople  and  the  northern  coast  of  the  ^Egean, 
and  it  would  have  the  important  advantage  of  obliging  an 
enemy  to  maintain  two  blockading  fleets  instead  of  one. 


528  DIVERSION   OF   THE   NILE. 

Cape  Cod  Canal. 

The  opening  of  a  navigable  cut  through  the  narrow  neck 
which  separates  the  southern  part  of  Cape  Cod  Bay  in  Massa 
chusetts  from  the  Atlantic,  was  long  ago  suggested,  and  there 
are  few  coast  improvements  on  the  Atlantic  shores  of  the  United 
States  which  are  recommended  by  higher  considerations  of 
utility.  It  would  save  the  most  important  coasting  trade  of 
the  United  States  the  long  and  dangerous  navigation  around 
Cape  Cod,  afford  a  new  and  safer  entrance  to  Boston  harbor 
for  vessels  from  Southern  ports,  secure  a  choice  of  passages, 
thus  permitting  arrivals  upon  the  coast  and  departures  from  it 
at  periods  when  wind  and  weather  might  otherwise  prevent 
them,  and  furnish  a  most  valuable  internal  communication  in 
case  of  coast  blockade  by  a  foreign  power.  The  difficulties  of 
the  undertaking  are  no  doubt  formidable,  but  the  expense  of 
maintenance  and  the  uncertainty  of  the  effects  of  currents  set 
ting  through  the  new  strait  are  still  more  serious  objections. 

Diversion  of  the  Nile. 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  project  of  great  physical 
change,  proposed  or  threatened  in  earlier  ages,  is  that  of  the 
diversion  of  the  Nile  from  its  natural  channel,  and  the  turning 
of  its  current  into  either  the  Libyan  desert  or  the  Red  Sea. 
The  Ethiopian  or  Abyssinian  princes  more  than  once  menaced 
the  Memlouk  sultans  with  the  execution  of  tins  alarming  pro 
ject,  and  the  fear  of  so  serious  an  evil  is  said  to  have  induced 
the  Moslems  to  conciliate  the  Abyssinian  kings  by  large  pres 
ents,  and  by  some  concessions  to  the  oppressed  Christians  of 
Egypt.*  Indeed,  Arabic  historians  affirm  that  in  the  tenth 

*  u  Some  hane  writte,  that  by  certain  kings  inhabiting  aboue,  the  Nilus 
should  there  be  stopped ;  &  at  a  time  prefixt,  let  loose  vpon  a  certaine 
tribute  payd  them  by  the  Acgyptians.  The  error  springing  perhaps  frO  a 
truth  (as  all  wandring  reports  for  the  most  part  doe)  in  that  the  Sultan 
doth  pay  a  certaine  annuall  summe  to  the  Abissin  Emperour  for  not  diuert- 
ing  the  course  of  the  Kiuer,  which  (they  say)  he  may,  or  impouerish  it  at 
the  least." — GEOEGE  SANDYS,  A  Relation  of  a  Journey,  etc.)  p.  98. 


DIVERSION  OF  THE   NILE.  529 

century  the  Ethiopians  dammed  the  river,  and,  for  a  whole 
year,  cut  off  its  waters  from  Egypt.  The  probable  explana 
tion  of  this  story  is  to  be  found  in  a  season  of  extreme  drought, 
such  as  have  sometimes  occurred  in  the  valley  of  the  Nile. 
About  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  Albuquerque 
the  "  Terrible  "  revived  the  scheme  of  turning  the  Nile  into 

O 

the  Red  Sea,  with  the  hope  of  destroying  the  transit  trade 
through  Egypt  by  way  of  Kosseir.  In  1525  the  King  of  Por 
tugal  was  requested  by  the  Emperor  of  Abyssinia  to  send  him 
engineers  for  that  purpose  ;*a  successor  of  that  prince  threat 
ened  to  attempt  the  project  about  the  year  1700,  and  even  as 
late  as  the  French  occupation  of  Egypt,  the  possibility  of 
driving  out  the  intruder  by  this  means  was  suggested  in 
England. 

It  cannot  be  positively  affirmed  that  the  diversion  of  the 
waters  of  the  Nile  to  the  Red  Sea  is  impossible.  In  the  chain 
of  mountains  which  separates  the  two  valleys,  Brown  found  a 
deep  depression  or  wadi,  extending  from  the  one  to  the  other, 
at  no  great  elevation  above  the  bed  of  the  river.  The  Libyan 
desert  is  so  much  higher  than  the  Nile  below  the  junction  of 
the  two  principal  branches  at  Khartum,  that  there  is  no  rea 
son  to  believe  a  new  channel  for  their  united  waters  could  be 
found  in  that  direction  ;  but  the  Bahr-el-Abiad  flows  through, 
if  it  does  not  rise  in,  a  great  table  land,  and  some  of  its  tribu 
taries  are  supposed  to  communicate  in  the  rainy  season  with 
branches  of  great  rivers  flowing  in  quite  another  direction. 
Hence  it  is  probable  that  a  portion  at  least  of  the  waters  of 
this  great  arm  of  the  Nile — and  perhaps  a  quantity  the  ab 
straction  of  which  would  be  sensibly  felt  in  Egypt — might  be 
sent  to  the  Atlantic  by  the  Niger,  lost  in  the  inland  lakes  of 
Central  Africa,  or  employed  to  fertilize  the  Libyan  sand 
wastes. 

Admitting  the  possibility  of  turning  the  whole  river  into 
the  Red  Sea,  let  us  consider  the  probable  effect  of  the  change. 
First  and  most  obvious  is  the  total  destruction  of  the  fertility 
of  Middle  and  Lower  Egypt,  the  conversion  of  that  part  of  the 
valley  into  a  desert,  and  the  extinction  of  its  imperfect  civiliza- 
34 


530  DIVERSION   OF   THE   NILE. 

tion,  if  not  the  absolute  extirpation  of  its  inhabitants.  This  is 
the  calamity  threatened  by  the  Abyssinian  princes  and  the  fe 
rocious  Portuguese  warrior,  and  feared  by  the  sultans  of  Egypt. 
Beyond  these  immediate  and  palpable  consequences  neither 
party  then  looked  ;  but  a  far  wider  geographical  area,  and  far 
more  extensive  and  various  human  interests,  would  be  affected 
by  the  measure.  The  spread  of  the  Nile  during  the  annual  in 
undation  covers,  for  many  weeks,  several  thousand  square 
miles  with  water,  and  at  other  seasons  of  the  year  pervades 
the  same  and  even  a  larger  area  with  moisture  by  infiltration. 
The  abstraction  of  so  large  an  evaporable  surface  from  the 
southern  shores  of  .the  Mediterranean  could  not  but  produce 
important  effects  on  many  meteorological  phenomena,  and  the 
humidity,  the  temperature,  the  electrical  condition  and  the  at 
mospheric  currents  of  Northeastern  Africa  might  be  modified 
to  a  degree  that  would  sensibly  affect  the  climate  of  Europe. 

The  Mediterranean,  deprived  of  the  contributions  of  the 
Nile,  would  require  a  larger  supply,  and  of  course  a  stronger 
current,  of  water  from  the  Atlantic  through  the  Straits  of  Gi 
braltar  ;  the  proportion  of  salt  it  contains  would  be  increased, 
and  the  animal  life  of  at  least  its  southern  borders  would  be 
consequently  modified ;  the  current  which  winds  along  its 
southern,  eastern,  and  northeastern  shores  would  be  dimin 
ished  in  force  and  volume,  if  not  destroyed  altogether,  and  its 
basin  and  its  harbors  would  be  shoaled  by  no  new  deposits 
from  the  highlands  of  inner  Africa. 

In  the  much  smaller  Ked  Sea,  more  immediately  percept 
ible,  if  not  greater,  effects,  would  be  produced.  The  deposits 
of  slime  would  reduce  its  depth,  and  perhaps,  in  the  course  of 
ages,  divide  it  into  an  inland  and  an  open  sea ;  its  waters 
would  be  more  or  less  freshened,  and  its  immensely  rich  ma 
rine  fauna  and  flora  changed  in  character  and  proportion,  and, 
near  the  mouth  of  the  river,  perhaps  even  destroyed  altogether ; 
its  navigable  channels  would  be  altered  in  position  and  often 
quite  obstructed ;  the  flow  of  its  tides  would  be  modified  by 
the  new  geographical  conditions ;  the  sediment  of  the  river 
would  form  new  coast  lines  and  lowlands,  which  would  be 


CHANGES   IN   THE   CASPIAN.  531 

covered  with  vegetation,  and  probably  thereby  produce  sensible 
climatic  changes. 

Changes  in  the  Caspian. 

The  Russian  Government  has  contemplated  the  establish 
ment  of  a  nearly  direct  water  communication  between  the  Cas 
pian  Sea  and  the  Sea  of  Azoff,  partly  by  natural  and  partly  by 
artificial  channels,  and  there  are  now  navigable  canals  between 
the  Don  and  the  Yolga  ;  but  these  works,  though  not  wanting 
in  commercial  and  political  interest,  do  not  possess  any  geo 
graphical  importance.  It  is,  however,  very  possible  to  pro 
duce  appreciable  geographical  changes  in  the  basin  of  the  Cas 
pian  by  the  diversion  of  the  great  rivers  which  flow  from  Cen 
tral  Russia.  The  surface  of  the  Caspian  is  eighty-three  feet 
below  the  level  of  the  Sea  of  Azoff,  and  its  depression  has  been 
explained  upon  the  hypothesis  that  the  evaporation  exceeds 
the  supply  derived,  directly  and  indirectly,  from  precipitation, 
though  able  physicists  now  maintain  that  the  sinking  of  this 
sea  is  due  to  a  subsidence  of  its  bottom  from  geological  causes. 
At  Tsaritsin,  the  Don,  which  empties  into  the  Sea  of  Azoff, 
and  the  Yolga,  which  pours  into  the  Caspian,  approach  each 
other  within  ten  miles.  JSTear  this  point,  by  means  of  open  or 
subterranean  canals,  the  Don  might  be  turned  into  the  Yolga, 
or  the  Yolga  into  the  Don.  If  we  suppose  the  whole  or  a 
large  proportion  of  the  waters  of  the  Don  to  be  thus  diverted 
from  their  natural  outlet  and  sent  down  to  the  Caspian,  the 
equilibrium  between  the  evaporation  from  that  sea  and  its 
supply  of  water  might  be  restored,  or  its  level  even  raised 
above  its  ancient  limits.  If  the  Yolga  were  turned  into  the 
Sea  of  Azoff,  the  Caspian  would  be  reduced  in  dimensions 
until  the  balance  between  loss  and  gain  should  be  reestab 
lished,  and  it  would  occupy  a  much  smaller  area  than  at  pres 
ent.  Such  changes  in  the  proportion  of  solid  and  fluid  surface 
would  have  some  climatic  effects  in  the  territory  which  drains 
into  the  Caspian,  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  introduction  of  a 
greater  quantity  of  fresh  water  into  the  Sea  of  Azoff  would 
render  that  gulf  less  saline,  affect  the  character  and  numbers 


532  REVOLUTIONS   IN   AMERICAN   HYDROGRAPHY. 

of  its  fish,  and  perhaps  be  not  wholly  without  sensible  influ 
ence  on  the  water  of  the  Black  Sea. 

Improvements  in  North  American  Hydrography. 

We  are  not  yet  well  enough  acquainted  with  the  geography 
of  Central  Africa,  or  of  the  interior  of  South  America,  to  con 
jecture  what  hydrographieal  revolutions  might  there  be 
wrought ;  but  from  the  fact  that  many  important  rivers  in 
both  continents  drain  extensive  table  lands,  of  very  moderate 
inclination,  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  important  changes 
in  the  course  of  rivers  might  be  accomplished.  Our  knowl 
edge  of  the  drainage  of  North  America  is  much  more  com 
plete,  and  it  is  certain  that  there  are  numerous  points  where 
the  courses  of  great  rivers,  or  the  discharge  of  considerable 
lakes,  might  be  completely  diverted,  or  at  least  partially  di 
rected  into  different  channels. 

The  surface  of  Lake  Erie  is  565  feet  above  that  of  the  Hud 
son  at  Albany,  and  it  is  so  near  the  level  of  the  great  plain 
lying  east  of  it,  that  it  was  found  practicable  to  supply  the 
western  section  of  the  canal,  which  unites  it  with  the  Hudson, 
with  water  from  the  lake,  or  rather  from  the  Niagara  which 
flows  out  of  it.  Hence  a  channel  might  be  constructed,  which 
would  draw  off  into  the  valley  of  the  Genesee  any  desirable 
proportion  of  the  water  naturally  discharged  by  the  Niagara. 
The  greatest  depth  of  water  yet  sounded  in  Lake  Erie  is  but 
two  hundred  and  seventy  feet,  the  mean  depth  one  hundred 
and  twenty.  Open  canals  parallel  with  the  Niagara,  or  di 
rectly  toward  the  Genesee,  might  be  executed  upon  a  scale 
which  would  exercise  an  important  influence  on  the  drainage 
of  the  lake,  if  there  were  any  adequate  motive  for  such  an  un 
dertaking.  Still  easier  would  it  be  to  create  additional  outlets 
for  the  waters  of  Lake  Superior  at  the  Saut  St.  Mary — where 
the  river  which  drains  the  lake  descends  twenty-two  feet  in  a 
single  mile — and  thus  produce  incalculable  effects,  both  upon 
that  lake  and  upon  the  great  chain  of  inland  waters  which 
communicate  with  it. 

The  summit  level  between  Lake  Michigan  and   the  Des 


DIVERSION    OF   THE   ItHINE.  533 

Plaines,  a  tributary  of  the  Mississippi,  is  only  twenty-seven 
feet  above  the  lake,  and  the  intervening  distance  is  but  a  very 
few  miles.  It  has  often  been  proposed  to  cut  an  open  channel 
across  this  ridge,  and  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  practicability  of 
the  project.  Were  this  accomplished,  although  such  a  cut 
would  not,  of  itself,  form  a  navigable  canal,  a  part  of  the 
waters  of  Lake  Michigan  would  be  contributed  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  instead  of  to  that  of  St.  Lawrence,  and  the  flow  might 
be  so  regulated  as  to  keep  the  Illinois  and  the  Mississippi  at 
flood  at  all  seasons  of  the  year.  The  increase  in  the  volume 
of  these  rivers  would  augment  their  velocity  and  their  trans 
porting  power,  and  consequently,  the  erosion  of  their  banks 
and  the  deposit  of  slime  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  while  the  in 
troduction  of  a  larger  body  of  cold  water  into  the  beds  of  these 
rivers  would  very  probably  produce  a  considerable  effect  on 
the  animal  life  that  peoples  them.  The  diversion  of  water 
from  the  common  basin  of  the  great  lakes  through  a  new  chan 
nel,  in  a  direction  opposite  to  their  natural  discharge,  would 
not  be  absolutely  without  influence  on  the  St.  Lawrence, 
though  probably  the  effect  would  be  too  small  to  be  in  any 
way  perceptible. 

Diversion  of  the  Rhine. 

The  interference  of  physical  improvements  with  vested 
rights  and  ancient  arrangements,  is  a  more  formidable  obstacle 
in  old  countries  than  in  new,  to  enterprises  involving  anything 
approaching  to  a  geographical  revolution.  Hence  such  pro 
jects  meet  with  stronger  opposition  in  Europe  than  in  Amer 
ica,  and  the  number  of  probable  changes  in  the  face  of  nature 
in  the  former  continent  is  proportionally  less.  I  have  noticed 
some  important  hydraulic  improvements  as  already  executed 
or  in  progress  in  Europe,  and  I  may  refer  to  some  others  as 
contemplated  or  suggested.  One  of  these  is  the  diversion  of 
the  Rhine  from  its  present  channel  below  Ragatz,  by  a  cut 
through  the  narrow  ridge  near  Sargans,  and  the  consequent 
turning  of  its  current  into  the  Lake  of  Wallenstadt.  This 

O 

would  be  an  extremely  easy  undertaking,  for  the  ridge  is  but 


534  DRAINING    OF   THE   ZUIDERZEE. 

twenty  feet  above  the  level  of  the  Rhine,  and  hardly  two  hun 
dred  yards  wide.  There  is  no  present  adequate  motive  fof 
this  diversion,  but  it  is  easy  to  suppose  that  it  may  become  ad 
visable  within  no  long  period.  The  navigation  of  the  Lake 
of  Constance  is  rapidly  increasing  in  importance,  and  the 
shoaling  of  the  eastern  end  of  that  lake  by  the  deposits  of  the 
Rhine  may  require  a  remedy  which  can  be  found  by  no  other 
so  ready  means  as  the  discharge  of  that  river  into  the  Lake  of 
"Wallenstadt.  The  navigation  of  this  latter  lake  is  not  import 
ant,  nor  is  it  ever  likely  to  become  so,  because  the  rocky  and 
precipitous  character  of  its  shores  renders  their  cultivation 
impossible.  It  is  of  great  depth,  and  its  basin  is  capacious 
enough  to  receive  and  retain  all  the  sediment  which  the  Rhine 
would  carry  into  it  for  thousands  of  years. 

Draining  of  the  Zuiderzee. 

I  have  referred  to  the  draining  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem  as 
an  operation  of  great  geographical  as  well  as  economical  and 
mechanical  interest.  A  much  more  gigantic  project,  of  a  sim 
ilar  character,  is  now  engaging  the  attention  of  the  Nether 
landish  engineers.  It  is  proposed  to  drain  the  great  salt-water 
basin  called  the  Zuiderzee.  This  inland  sea  covers  an  area  of 
not  less  than  two  thousand  square  miles,  or  about  one  million 
three  hundred  thousand  acres.  The  seaward  half,  or  that  por 
tion  lying  northwest  of  a  line  drawn  from  Enkhuizen  to  Sta- 
voren,  is  believed  to  have  been  converted  from  a  marsh  to  an 
open  bay  since  the  fifth  century  after  Christ,  and  this  change 
is  ascribed,  partly  if  not  wholly,  to  the  interference  of  man 
with  the  order  of  nature.  The  Zuiderzee  communicates  with 
the  sea  by  at  least  six  considerable  channels,  separated  from 
each  other  by  low  islands,  and  the  tide  rises  within  the  basin 
to  the  height  of  three  feet.  To  drain  the  Zuiderzee,  these 
channels  must  first  be  closed  and  the  passage  of  the  tidal  flood 
through  them  cut  off.  If  this  be  done,  the  coast  currents  will 
be  restored  approximately  to  the  lines  they  followed  fourteen 
or  fifteen  centuries  ago,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  an 


THE  WATEES  OF  THE  KAEST.  535 

appreciable  effect  will  thus  be  produced  upon  all  the  tidal 
phenomena  of  that  coast,  and,  of  course,  upon  the  maritime 
geography  of  Holland. 

A  ring  dike  and  canal  must  then  be  constructed  around 
the  landward  side  of  the  basin,  to  exclude  and  carry  off  the 
fresh-water  streams  which  now  empty  into  it.  One  of  these, 
the  Ijssel,  a  considerable  river,  has  a  course  of  eighty  miles, 
and  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  outlets  of  the  Rhine,  though  aug 
mented  by  the  waters  of  several  independent  tributaries. 
These  preparations  being  made,  and  perhaps  transverse  dikes 
erected  -at  convenient  points  for  dividing  the  gulf  into  smaller 
portions,  the  water  must  be  pumped  out  by  machinery,  in  sub 
stantially  the  same  way  as  in  the  case  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem. 
No  safe  calculations  can  be  made  as  to  the  expenditure  of  time 
and  money  required  for  the  execution  of  this  stupendous  enter 
prise,  but  I  believe  its  practicability  is  not  denied  by  compe 
tent  judges,  though  doubts  are  entertained  as  to  its  financial 
expediency.  The  geographical  results  of  this  improvement 
would  be  analogous  to  those  of  the  draining  of  the  Lake  of 
Haarlem,  but  many  times  multiplied  in  extent,  and  its  mete 
orological  effects,  though  perhaps  not  perceptible  on  the  coast, 
could  hardly  fail  to  be  appreciable  in  the  interior  of  Holland. 


Waters  of  the  Karst. 

The  singular  structure  of  the  Karst,  the  great  limestone 
plateau  lying  to  the  north  of  Trieste,  has  suggested  some  en 
gineering  operations  which  might  be  attended  with  sensible 
effects  upon  the  geography  of  the  province.  I  have  described 
this  table  land  as,  though  now  bare  of  forests,  and  almost  of 
vegetation,  having  once  been  covered  with  woods,  and  as  being 
completely  honeycombed  by  caves  through  which  the  drain 
age  of  that  region  is  conducted.  Schmidl  has  spent  years  in 
studying  the  subterranean  geography  and  hydrography  of  this 
singular  district,  and  his  discoveries,  and  those  of  earlier  cave- 
hunters,  have  led  to  various  proposals  of  physical  improve 
ment  of  a  novel  character.  Many  of  the  underground  water 


536  SUBTERRANEAN    WATERS    OF    GREECE. 

courses  of  the  Karst  are  without  visible  outlet,  and,  in  some 
instances  at  least,  they,  no  doubt,  send  their  waters,  by  deep 
channels,  to  the  Adriatic.*  The  city  of  Trieste  is  very  insuffi 
ciently  provided  with  fresh  wrater.  It  has  been  thought  prac 
ticable  to  supply  this  want  by  tunnelling  through  the  wall  of 
the  plateau,  which  rises  abruptly  in  the  rear  of  the  town,  until 
some  subterranean  stream  is  encountered,  the  current  of  which 
can  be  conducted  to  the  city.  More  visionary  projectors  have 
gone  further,  and  imagined  that  advantage  might  be  taken  of 
the  natural  tunnels  under  the  Karst  for  the  passage  of  roads, 
railways,  and  even  navigable  canals.  But  however  chimerical 
these  latter  schemes  may  seem,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe 
that  art  might  avail  itself  of  these  galleries  for  improving  the 
imperfect  drainage  of  the  champaign  country  bounded  by  the 
Karst,  and  that  stopping  or  opening  the  natural  channels 
might  very  much  modify  the  hydrography  of  an  extensive 
region. 

Subterranean  Waters  of  Greece. 

There  are  parts  of  continental  Greece  which  resemble  the 
Karst  and  the  adjacent  plains  in  being  provided  with  a  natural 
subterranean  drainage.  The  superfluous  waters  run  off  into 
limestone  caves  called  catavothra  (/caTa{360pa).  In  ancient 
times,  the  entrances  to  the  catavothra  were  enlarged  or  par 
tially  closed  as  the  convenience  of  drainage  or  irrigation  re 
quired,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  similar  measures  might  be 
adopted  at  the  present  day  with  great  advantage  both  to  the 
salubrity  and  the  productiveness  of  the  regions  so  drained. 

*  The  Recca,  a  river  with  a  considerable  current,  has  been  satisfactorily 
identified  with  a  stream  flowing  through  the  cave  of  Trebich,  and  with  the 
Timavo — the  Timavus  of  Virgil  and  the  ancient  geographers — which  empties 
v  through  several  mouths  into  the  Adriatic  between  Trieste  and  Aquileia. 
The  distance  from  Trieste  to  a  suitable  point  in  the  grotto  of  Trebich  is 
thought  to  be  less  than  three  miles,  and  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  con 
structing  a  tunnel  do  not  seem  formidable.  The  works  of  Schmidl,  Die 
HoTilen  des  Karstes,  and  Der  unterirdische  Lauf  dcr  Recca,  are  not  common 
out  of  Germany,  but  the  reader  will  find  many  interesting  facts  derived 
from  them  in  two  articles  entitled  Der  unterirdische  Lauf  der  Eecca^  in 
dcr  Natvr,  xx,  pp.  250-254,  263-266. 


COVERING   ROCK   WITH    EARTH.  537 

Soil  oelow  Rock. 

One  of  the  most  singular  changes  of  natural  surface  effect 
ed  by  man  is  that  observed  by  Beechey  and  by  Earth  at  Lin 
Tefla,  and  near  Gebel  Genunes,  in  the  district  of  Ben  Gasi,  in 
Northern  Africa.  In  this  region  the  superficial  stratum  origi 
nally  consisted  of  a  thin  sheet  of  rock  covering  a  layer  of  fer 
tile  earth.  This  rock  has  been  broken  up,  and,  when  not  prac 
ticable  to  find  use  for  it  in  fences,  fortresses,  or  dwellings, 
heaped  together  in  high  piles,  and  the  soil,  thus  bared  of  its 
stony  shell,  has  been  employed  for  agricultural  purposes.*  If 
we  remember  that  gunpowder  was  unknown  at  the  period 
when  these  remarkable  improvements  were  executed,  and  of 
course  that  the  rock  could  have  been  broken  only  with  the 
chisel  and  wedge,  we  must  infer  that  land  had  at  that  time  a 
very  great  pecuniary  value,  and,  of  course,  that  the  province, 
though  now  exhausted,  and  almost  entirely  deserted  by  man, 
had  once  a  dense  population. 

Covering  Rock  with  Earth. 

If  man  has,  in  some  cases,  broken  up  rock  to  reach  produc 
tive  ground  beneath,  he  has,  in  many  other  instances,  covered 
bare  ledges,  and  sometimes  extensive  surfaces  of  solid  stone, 
with  fruitful  earth,  brought  from  no  inconsiderable  distance. 
ISTot  to  speak  of  the  Oampo  Santo  at  Pisa,  filled,  or  at  least 
coated,  with  earth  from  the  Holy  Land,  for  quite  a  different 
purpose,  it  is  affirmed  that  the  garden  of  the  monastery  of  St. 
Catherine  at  Mount  Sinai  is  composed  of  Nile  mud,  transport 
ed  on  the  backs  of  camels  from  the  banks  of  that  river.  Par- 
they  and  older  authors  state  that  all  the  productive  soil  of  the 
Island  of  Malta  was  brought  over  from  Sicily. f  The  accuracy 

*  EARTH,  Wanderungen  durch  die  Kiistcn  des  Mittclmecrcs,  i,  p.  353. 
In  a  note  on  page  380,  of  the  same  volume,  Barth  cites  Strabo  as  asserting 
tli at  a  similar  practice  prevailed  in  lapygia ;  but  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  the  epithet  rpa^f !«,  applied  by  Strabo  to  the  original  surface,  ne 
cessarily  implies  that  it  was  covered  with  a  continuous  stratum  of  rock. 

t  PAUTHET,  Wanderungen  durcli  Sicilien  und  die  Lexante,  i,  p.  40-4. 


538  THE    WADIES    OF   AKABIA   PETEJSA. 

of  the  information  may  be  questioned  in  both  cases,  but  similar 
practices,  on  a  smaller  scale,  are  matter  of  daily  observation  in 
many  parts  of  Southern  Europe.  Much  of  the  wine  of  the 
Moselle  is  derived  from  grapes  grown  on  earth  carried  high 
up  the  cliffs  on  the  shoulders  of  men.  In  China,  too,  rock 
has  been  artificially  covered  with  earth  to  an  extent  whicli 
gives  such  operations  a  real  geographical  importance,  and  the 
accounts  of  the  importation  of  earth  at  Malta,  and  the  fertiliza 
tion  of  the  rocks  on  Mount  Sinai  with  slime  from  the 
may  be  not  wholly  without  foundation. 


Wadies  of  Arabia  Petraia. 

In  the  latter  case,  indeed,  river  sediment  might  be  very 
useful  as  a  manure,  but  it  could  hardly  be  needed  as  a  soil ; 
for  the  growth  of  vegetation  in  the  wadies  of  the  Sinaitic  Pen 
insula  shows  that  the  disintegrated  rock  of  its  mountains  re- 
quires  only  water  to  stimulate  it  to  considerable  productive 
ness.  The  wadies  present,  not  unfrcquently,  narrow  gorges, 
which  might  easily  be  closed,  and  thus  accumulations  of  earth, 
and  reservoirs  of  water  to  irrigate  it,  might  be  formed  whicli 
would  convert  many  a  square  mile  of  desert  into  nourishing 
date  gardens  and  cornfields.  Not  far  from  Wadi  Feiran,  on 
the  most  direct  route  to  Wadi  Esh-Sheikh,  is  a  very  narrow 
pass  called  by  the  Arabs  El  Bueb  (El  Bab)  or,  The  Gate, 
which  might  be  securely  closed  to  a  very  considerable  height, 
with  little  labor  or  expense.  Above  this  pass  is  a  wide  and 
nearly  level  expanse,  containing  a  hundred  acres,  perhaps 
much  more.  This  is  filled  up  to  a  certain  regular  level  with 
deposits  brought  down  by  torrents  before  the  Gate,  or  Bueb, 
was  broken  through,  and  they  have  now  worn  down  a  channel 
in  the  deposits  to  the  bed  of  the  wadi.  If  a  dam  were  con 
structed  at  the  pass,  and  reservoirs  built  to  retain  the  winter 
rains,  a  great  extent  of  valley  might  be  rendered  cultivable. 


INCIDENTAL   EFFECTS   OF  HUMAN   ACTION.  539 

Incidental  Effects  of  Human  Action. 

I  have  more  than  once  alluded  to  the  collateral  and  un 
sought  consequences  of  human  action  as  being  often  more  mo 
mentous  than  the  direct  and  desired  results.  There  are  cases 
where  such  incidental,  or,  in  popular  speech,  accidental,  conse 
quences,  though  of  minor  importance  in  themselves,  serve  to 
illustrate  natural  processes ;  others,  where,  by  the  magnitude 
and  character  of  the  material  traces  they  leave  behind  them, 
they  prove  that  man,  in  primary  or  in  more  advanced  stages 
of  social  life,  must  have  occupied  particular  districts  for  a 
longer  period  than  has  been  supposed  by  popular  chronology. 
"  On  the  coast  of  Jutland,"  says  Forchhammer,  "  wherever  a 
bolt  from  a  wreck  or  any  other  fragment  of  iron  is  deposited 
in  the  beach  sand,  the  particles  are  cemented  together,  and 
form  a  very  solid  mass  around  the  iron.  A  remarkable  forma 
tion  of  this  sort  was  observed  a  few  years  ago  in  constructing 
the  sea  wall  of  the  harbor  of  Elsineur.  This  stratum,  which 
seldom  exceeded  a  foot  in  thickness,  rested  upon  common 
beach  sand,  and  was  found  at  various  depths,  less  near  the 
shore,  greater  at  some  distance  from  it.  It  was  composed  of 
pebbles  and  sand,  and  contained  a  great  quantity  of  pins,  and 
some  coins  of  the  reign  of  Christian  IV,  between  the  begin 
ning  and  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Here  and 
there,  a  coating  of  metallic  copper  had  been  deposited  by  gal 
vanic  action,  and  the  presence  of  completely  oxydized  metallic 
iron  was  often  detected.  An  investigation  undertaken  by 
Councillor  Reinhard  and  myself,  at  the  instance  of  the  Society 
of  Science,  made  it  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  this 
formation  owed  its  origin  to  the  street  sweepings  of  the  town, 
which  had  been  thrown  upon  the  beach,  and  carried  off  and 
distributed  by  the  waves  over  the  bottom  of  the  harbor."* 
These  and  other  familiar  observations  of  the  like  sort  show 
that  a  sandstone  reef,  of  no  inconsiderable  magnitude,  might 

*  Gcofjnostisclie  Studien  am  Meercs  Ufer,  LEONHAED  und  BEONN,  Jahr- 
luch,  1841,  pp.  25,  26. 


540  INCIDENTAL   EFFECTS    OF   HUMAN   ACTION. 

originate  from  the  stranding  of  a  ship  with  a  cargo  of  iron,*  or 
from  throwing  the  waste  of  an  establishment  for  working  met 
als  into  running  water  which  might  carry  it  to  the  sea. 

Parthey  records  a  singular  instance  of  unforeseen  mischief 
from  an  interference  with  the  arrangements  of  nature.  A  land 
owner  at  Malta  possessed  a  rocky  plateau  sloping  gradually 
toward  the  sea,  and  terminating  in  a  precipice  forty  or  fifty 
feet  high,  through  natural  openings  in  which  the  sea  water 
flowed  into  a  large  cave  under  the  rock.  The  proprietor  at 
tempted  to  establish  salt  works  on  the  surface,  and  cut  shallow 
pools  in  the  rock  for  the  evaporation  of  the  water.  In  order 
to  fill  the  salt  pans  more  readily,  he  sank  a  well  down  to  the 
cave  beneath,  through  which  he  drew  up  water  by  a  windlass 
and  buckets.  The  speculation  proved  a  failure,  because  the 
water  filtered  through  the  porous  bottom  of  the  pans,  leaving 
little  salt  behind.  But  this  was  a  small  evil,  compared  with 
other  destructive  consequences  that  followed.  When  the  sea 
was  driven  into  the  cave  by  violent  west  or  northwest  winds, 
it  shot  a,  jet  (Teau  through  the  well  to  the  height  of  sixty  feet, 
the  spray  of  which  was  scattered  far  and  wide  over  the  neigh 
boring  gardens  and  blasted  the  crops.  The  well  was  now 
closed  with  stones,  but  the  next  winter's  storms  hurled  them 
out  again,  and  spread  the  salt  spray  over  the  grounds  in  the 
vicinity  as  before.  Repeated  attempts  were  made  to  stop  the 
orifice,  but  at  the  time  of  Parthey's  visit  the  sea  had  thrice 
burst  through,  and  it  was  feared  that  the  evil  was  without 
remedy.f 

I  have  mentioned  the  great  exent  of  the  heaps  of  oyster 
and  other  shells  left  by  the  American  Indians  on  the  Atlantic 
coast  of  the  United  States.  Some  of  the  Danish  kitchen- 
middens,  which  closely  resemble  them,  are  a  thousand  feet 
long,  from  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  two  hundred  wide,  and 
from  six  to  ten  high.  These  piles  have  an  importance  as  geo 
logical  witnesses,  independent  of  their  bearing  upon  human 

*  KOHL,  Schleswig-Hohtein,  ii,  p.  45. 

t  Wanderungen  durch  Sicilien  und  die  Levante,  i,  p.  406. 


INCIDENTAL   EFFECTS    OF   HUMAN   ACTION.  54:1 

history.  Wherever  the  coast  line  appears,  from  other  evidence, 
to  have  remained  unchanged  in  outline  and  elevation  since 
they  were  accumulated,  they  are  found  near  the  sea,  and  not 
more  than  about  ten  feet  above  its  level.  In  some  cases  they 
are  at  a  considerable  distance  from  the  beach,  and  in  these  in 
stances,  so  far  as  yet  examined,  there  are  proofs  that  the  coast 
has  advanced  in  consequence  of  upheaval  or  of  fluviatile  or 
marine  deposit.  Where  they  are  altogether  wanting,  the  coast 
seems  to  have  sunk  or  been  washed  away  by  the  sea.  The 
constancy  of  these  observations  justifies  geologists  in  arguing, 
where  other  evidence  is  wanting,  the  advance  of  land  or  sea 
respectively,  or  the  elevation  or  depression  of  the  former,  from 
the  position  or  the  absence  of  these  heaps  alone. 

Every  traveller  in  Italy  is  familiar  with  Monte  Testaccio, 
the  mountain  of  potsherds,  at  Rome ;  but  this  deposit,  large 
as  it  is,  shrinks  into  insignificance  when  compared  with  masses 
of  similar  origin  in  the  neighborhood  of  older  cities.  The  cast 
away  pottery  of  ancient  towns  in  Magna  Grsecia  composes 
strata  of  such  extent  and  thickness  that  they  have  been  digni 
fied  with  the  appellation  of  the  ceramic  formation.  The  Nile, 
as  it  slowly  changes  its  bed,  exposes  in  its  banks  masses  of  the 
same  material,  so  vast  that  the  population  of  the  world  during 
the  whole  historical  period  would  seem  to  have  chosen  this 
valley  as  a  general  deposit  for  its  broken  vessels. 

The  fertility  imparted  to  the  banks  of  the  Nile  by  the  wa 
ter  and  the  slime  of  the  inundations,  is  such  that  manures  are 
little  employed.  Hence  much  domestic  waste,  which  would 
elsewhere  be  employed  to  enrich  the  soil,  is  thrown  out  into 
vacant  places  near  the  town.  Hills  of  rubbish  are  thus  piled 
up  which  astonish  the  traveller  almost  as  much  as  the  solid 
pyramids  themselves.  The  heaps  of  ashes  and  other  house 
hold  refuse  collected  on  the  borders  and  within  the  limits  of 
Cairo  were  so  large,  that  the  removal  of  them  by  Ibrahim 
Pacha  has  been  looked  upon  as  one  of  the  great  works  of  the 
age. 

The  soil  near  cities,  the  street  sweepings  of  which  are 
spread  upon  the  ground  as  manure,  is  perceptibly  raised  by 


54:2        .  EAETHQUAKE8. 

them  and  by  other  effects  of  human  industry,  and  in  spite  of 
all  efforts  to  remove  the  waste,  the  level  of  the  ground  on 
which  large  towns  stand  is  constantly  elevated.  The  present 
streets  of  Rome  are  twenty  feet  above  those  of  the  ancient 
city.  The  Appian  way  between  Rome  and  Albano,  when 
cleared  out  a  few  years  ago,  was  found  buried  four  or  five  feet 
deep,  and  the  fields  along  the  road  were  elevated  nearly  or 
quite  as  much.  The  floors  of  many  churches  in  Italy,  not 
more  than  six  or  seven  centuries  old,  are  now  three  or  four  feet 
below  the  adjacent  streets,  though  it  is  proved  by  excavations 
that  they  were  built  as  many  feet  above  them. 


Resistance  to  Great  Natural  Forces. 

I  have  often  spoken  of  the  greater  and  more  subtile  natural 
forces,  and  especially  of  geological  agencies,  as  powers  beyond 
human  guidance  or  resistance.  This  is  no  doubt  at  present 
true  in  the  main,  but  man  has  shown  that  he  is  not  altogether 
impotent  to  struggle  with  even  these  mighty  servants  of  na 
ture,  and  his  unconscious  as  well  as  his  deliberate  action  may 
in  some  cases  have  increased  or  diminished  the  intensity  of  their 
energies.  It  is  a  very  ancient  belief  that  earthquakes  are  more 
destructive  in  districts  where  the  crust  of  the  earth  is  solid  and 
homogeneous,  than  where  it  is  of  a  looser  and  more  interrupt 
ed  structure.  Aristotle,  Pliny  the  elder,  and  Seneca  believed 
that  not  only  natural  ravines  and  caves,  but  quarries,  wells, 
and  other  human  excavations,  which  break  the  continuity  of 
the  terrestrial  strata  and  facilitate  the  escape  of  elastic  vapors, 
have  a  sensible  influence  in  diminishing  the  violence  and  pre 
venting  the  propagation  of  the  earth  waves.  In  all  countries 
subject  to  earthquakes  this  opinion  is  still  maintained,  and  it 
is  asserted  that,  both  in  ancient  and  in  modern  times,  buildings 
protected  by  deep  wells  under  or  near  them  have  suffered  less 
from  earthquakes  than  those  the  architects  of  which  have  neg 
lected  this  precaution.* 

*  LANDG^BE,  Naturgeschichtc  der  Vulkane,  ii,  pp.  19,  20. 


EARTHQUAKES.  54:8 

If  the  commonly  received  theory  of  the  cause  of  earth 
quakes  is  true — that,  namely,  which  ascribes  them  to  the  elas 
tic  force  of  gases  accumulated  or  generated  in  subterranean 
reservoirs — it  is  evident  that  open  channels  of  communication 
between  such  reservoirs  and  the  atmosphere  might  serve  as  a 
harmless  discharge  of  gases  that  would  otherwise  acquire  de 
structive  energy.  The  doubt  is  whether  artificial  excavations 
can  be  carried  deep  enough  to  reach  the  laboratory  where  the 
elastic  fluids  are  distilled.  There  are,  in  many  places,  small 
natural  crevices  through  which  such  fluids  escape,  and  the 
source  of  them  sometimes  lies  at  so  moderate  a  depth  that  they 
pervade  the  superficial  soil  and,  as  it  were,  transpire  from  it, 
over  a  considerable  area.  When  the  borer  of  an  ordinary  ar 
tesian  well  strikes  into  a  cavity  in  the  earth,  imprisoned  air 
often  rushes  out  with  great  violence,  and  this  has  been  still 
more  frequently  observed  in  sinking  mineral-oil  wells.  In 
this  latter  case,  the  discharge  of  a  vehement  current  of  inflam 
mable  fluid  sometimes  continues  for  hours  and  even  longer 
periods.  These  facts  seem  to  render  it  not  wholly  improbable 
that  the  popular  belief  of  the  efficacy  of  deep  wells  in  miti 
gating  the  violence  of  earthquakes  is  well  founded. 

In  general,  light,  wooden  buildings  are  less  injured  by 
earthquakes  than  more  solid  structures  of  stone  or  brick,  and 
it  is  commonly  supposed  that  the  power  put  forth  by  the  earth 
wave  is  too  great  to  be  resisted  by  any  amount  of  weight  or 
solidity  of  mass  that  man  can  pile  up  upon  the  surface.  But 
the  fact  that  in  countries  subject  to  earthquakes  many  very  large 
and  strongly  constructed  palaces,  temples,  and  other  monu 
ments  have  stood  for  centuries,  comparatively  uninjured,  sug 
gests  a  doubt  whether  this  opinion  is  sound.  The  earthquake 
of  the  first  of  November,  1755,  which  was  felt  over  a  twelfth 
part  of  the  earth's  surface,  was  probably  the  most  violent  of 
which  we  have  any  clear  and  distinct  account,  and  it  seems  to 
have  exerted  its  most  destructive  force  at  Lisbon.  It  has  often 
been  noticed  as  a  remarkable  fact,  that  the  mint,  a  building 
of  great  solidity,  was  almost  wholly  unaffected  by  the  shock 
which  shattered  every  house  and  church  in  fne  city,  and  its 


544  RESISTANCE    TO   VOLCANIC    ACTION. 

escape  from  the  common  ruin  can  hardly  be  accounted  for  ex 
cept  upon  the  supposition  that  its  weight,  compactness,  and 
strength  of  material  enabled  it  to  resist  an  agitation  of  the 
earth  which  overthrew  all  weaker  structures.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  stone  pier  in  the  harbor  of  Lisbon,  on  which  thousands 
of  people  had  taken  refuge,  sank  with  its  foundations  to  a 
great  depth  during  the  same  earthquake  ;  and  it  is  plain  that 
where  subterranean  cavities  exist,  at  moderate  depths,  the  erec 
tion  of  heavy  masses  upon  them  would  tend  to  promote  the 
breaking  down  of  the  strata  which  roof  them  over. 

No  physicist,  I  believe,  has  supposed  that  man  can  avert 
the  eruption  of  a  volcano  or  diminish  the  quantity  of  melted 
rock  which  it  pours  out  of  the  bowels  of  the  earth ;  but  it  is 
not  always  impossible  to  divert  the  course  of  even  a  large  cur 
rent  of  lava.  "  The  smaller  streams  of  lava  near  Catania," 
says  Ferrara,  in  describing  the  great  eruption  of  1669,  "  were 
turned  from  their  course  by  building  dry  walls  of  stone  as  a 
barrier  against  them.  *  *  *  It  was  proposed  to  divert 
the  main  current  from  Catania,  and  fifty  men,  protected  by 
hides,  were  sent  with  hooks  and  iron,  bars  to  break  the  flank 
of  the  stream  near  Belpasso.*  When  the  opening  was  made, 

*  Soon  after  the  current  issues  from  the  volcano,  it  is  covered  above 
and  at  its  sides,  and  finally  in  front,  with  scoria?,  formed  by  the  cooling  of 
the  exposed  surface,  which  bury  and  conceal  the  fluid  mass.  The  stream 
rolls  on  under  the  coating,  and  between  the  walls  of  scorige,  and  it  was  the 
lateral  crust  which  was  broken  through  by  the  workmen  mentioned  in 
the  text. 

The  distance  to  which  lava  flows,  before  its  surface  begins  to  solidify, 
depends  on  its  volume,  its  composition,  its  temperature  and  that  of  the  air, 
the  force  with  which  it  is  ejected,  and  the  inclination  of  the  declivity  over 
which  it  runs.  In  most  cases  it  is  difficult  to  approach  the  current  at  points 
where  it  is  still  entirely  fluid,  and  hence  opportunities  of  observing  it  in 
that  condition  are  not  very  frequent.  In  the  eruption  of  February,  1850, 
on  the  east  side  of  Vesuvius,  I  went  quite  up  to  one  of  the  outlets.  The 
lava  shot  out  of  the  orifice  upward  with  great  velocity,  like  the  water 
from  a  spring,  in  a  stream  eight  or  ten  feet  in  diameter,  throwing  up  occa 
sionally  volcanic  bombs,  but  it  immediately  spread  out  on  the  declivity 
down  which  it  flowed,  to  the  width  of  several  yards.  It  continued  red  hot 
in  broad  daylight,  and  without  a  particle  of  scorias  on  its  surface,  for  a 


EFFECTS   OF   MINING.  545 

fluid  lava  poured  forth  and  flowed  rapidly  toward  Paterno ; 
but  the  inhabitants  of  that  place,  not  caring  to  sacrifice  their 
own  town  to  save  Catania,  rushed  out  in  arms  and  put  a  stop 
to  the  operation."  *  In  the  eruption  of  Vesuvius  in  1794,  the 
viceroy  saved  from  impending  destruction  the  town  of  Portici, 
and  the  valuable  collection  of  antiquities  then  deposited  there 
but  since  removed  to  Naples,  by  employing  several  thousand 
men  to  dig  a  ditch  above  the  town,  by  which  the  lava  current 
was  carried  off  in  another  direction.! 

Effects  of  Mining. 

The  excavations  made  by  man,  for  mining  and  other  pur 
poses,  may  sometimes  occasion  disturbance  of  the  surface  by 
the  subsidence  of  the  strata  above  them,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
mine  of  Fahlun,  but  such  accidents  must  always  be  too  incon 
siderable  in  extent  to  deserve  notice  in  a  geographical  point  of 
view.  Such  excavations,  however,  may  interfere  materially 
with  the  course  of  subterranean  waters,  and  it  has  even  been 
conjectured  that  the  removal  of  large  bodies  of  metallic  ore 

course  of  at  least  one  hundred  yards.  At  this  distance,  the  suffocating, 
sulphurous  vapors  became  so  dense  that  I  could  follow  the  current  no  far 
ther.  The  undulations  of  the  surface  were  like  those  of  a  brook  swollen 
by  rain.  I  estimated  the  height  of  the  waves  at  five  or  six  inches  by  a 
breadth  of  eighteen  or  twenty.  To  the  eye,  the  fluidity  of  the  lava  seemed 
as  perfect  as  that  of  water,  but  masses  of  cold  lava  weighing  ten  or  fifteen 
pounds  floated  upon  it  like  cork. 

The  neat  emitted  by  lava  currents  seems  extremely  small  when  we  con 
sider  the  temperature  required  to  fuse  such  materials  and  the  great  length 
of  time  they  take  in  cooling.  I  saw  at  Nicolosi  ancient  oil  jars,  holding  a 
hundred  gallons  or  more,  which  had  been  dug  out  from  under  a  stream  of 
old  lava  above  that  town.  They  had  been  very  slightly  covered  with  vol 
canic  ashes  before  the  lava  flowed  over  them,  but  the  lead  with  which 
holes  in  them  had  been  plugged  was  not  melted.  The  current  that  buried 
Mompiliere  in  1669  was  thirty-five  feet  thick,  but  marble  statues,  in  a 
church  over  which  the  lava  formed  an  arch,  were  found  uncalcined  and 
uninjured  in  1704.  See  SCR  OPE,  Volcanoes,  chap.  VI.  §  6. 

*  FERRARA,  Descrizione  dell"1  Etna,  p.  108. 

f  LANDGREBE,  Naturgescliichte  der  Vulkane,  ii,  p.  82. 


54:6  BURNING   COAL  MINES, 

from  their  original  deposits  might,  at  least  locally,  affect  the 
magnetic  and  electrical  condition  of  the  earth's  crust  to  a  sen 
sible  degree. 

Accidental  fires  in  mines  of  coal  or  lignite  sometimes  lead 
to  consequences  not  only  destructive  to  large  quantities  of  val 
uable  material,  but  may,  directly  or  indirectly,  produce  results 
important  in  geography.  The  coal  occasionally  takes  lire  from 
the  miners'  lights  or  other  fires  used  by  them,  and,  if  long  ex 
posed  to  air  in  deserted  galleries,  may  be  spontaneously  kin 
dled.  Under  favorable  circumstances,  a  stratum  of  coal  will 
burn  till  it  is  exhausted,  and  a  cavity  may  be  burnt  out  in  a 
few  months  which  human  labor  could  not  excavate  in  many 
years.  Wittwer  informs  us  that  a  coal  mine  at  St.  Etienne  in 
Dauphiny  has  been  burning  ever  since  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  that  a  mine  near  Duttweiler,  another  near  Epterode,  and 
a  third  at  Zwickau,  have  been  on  fire  for  two  hundred  years. 
Such  conflagrations  not  only  produce  cavities  in  the  earth,  but 
communicate  a  perceptible  degree  of  heat  to  the  surface,  and 
the  author  just  quoted  cites  cases  where  this  heat  has  been  ad 
vantageously  employed  in  forcing  vegetation.* 

*  PhysilcaliscTie  Geographic,  p.  1G8.  Beds  of  peat,  accidentally  set  on 
fire,  sometimes  continue  to  burn  for  months.  I  take  the  following  account 
of  a  case  of  this  sort  from  a  recent  American  journal : 

"  A  CURIOUS  PHENOMENON. — "When  the  track  of  the  railroad  between 
Brunswick  and  Bath  was  being  graded,  in  crossing  a  meadow  near  the 
populous  portion  of  the  latter  city,  the  '  dump '  suddenly  took  on  a  sink 
ing  symptom,  and  down  went  the  twenty  feet  fill  of  gravel,  clay,  and 
broken  rocks,  out  of  sight,  and  it  was  a  long,  long  time  before  dirt  trains 
could  fill  the  capacious  stomach  that  seemed  ready  to  receive  all  the  solid 
material  that  could  be  turned  into  it.  The  difficulty  was  at  length  over 
come,  but  all  along  the  side  of  the  sinkage  the  earth  was  thrown  up,  broken 
into  yawning  chasms,  and  the  surface  was  thus  elevated  above  its  old  watery 
level.  Since  that  time  this  ground,  thus  slightly  elevated,  has  been  culti 
vated,  and  has  yielded  enormously  of  whatever  the  owner  seemed  disposed 
to  plant  upon  it.  Some  three  months  ago,  by  some  means  unknown  to  us, 
the  underlying  peat  took  fire,  and  for  weeks,  as  we  had  occasion  to  pass  it, 
we  noticed  the  smoke  arising  from  the  smouldering  combustion  beneath 
the  surface.  Rains  fell,  but  the  fire  burned,  and  the  smoke  continued  to 
arise.  Monday  we  had  occasion  to  pass  the  spot,  and  though  nearly  a 


RIVER   SEDIMENT.  547 

Espy* a  Theories. 

Espy's  well  known  suggestion  of  the  possibility  of  causing 
rain  artificially,  by  kindling  great  fires,  is  not  likely  to  be 
turned  to  practical  account,  but  the  speculations  of  this  able 
meteorologist  are  not,  for  that  reason,  to  be  rejected  as  worth 
less.  His  labors  exhibit  great  industry  in  the  collection  of 
facts,  much  ingenuity  in  dealing  with  them,  remarkable  in 
sight  into  the  laws  of  nature,  and  a  ready  perception  of  analo 
gies  and  relations  not  obvious  to  minds  less  philosophically 
constituted.  They  have  unquestionably  contributed  very  es 
sentially  to  the  advancement  of  meteorological  science.  The 
possibility  that  the  distribution  and  action  of  electricity  may 
be  considerably  modified  by  long  lines  of  iron  railways  and 
telegraph  wires,  is  a  kindred  thought,  and  in  fact  rests  much 
on  the  same  foundation  as  the  belief  in  the  utility  of  lightning 
rods,  but  such  influence  is  too  obscure  and  too  small  to  have 
been  yet  detected. 

River  Sediment. 

The  manifestation  of  the  internal  heat  of  the  earth  at  any 
given  point  is  conditioned  by  the  thickness  of  the  crust  at  such 
point.  The  deposits  of  rivers  tend  to  augment  that  thickness  at 
their  estuaries.  The  sediment  of  slowly  flowing  rivers  empty 
ing  into  shallow  seas  is  spread  over  so  great  a  surface  that  we 
can  hardly  imagine  the  foot  or  two  of  slime  they  let  fall  over 
a  wide  area  in  a  century  to  form  an  element  among  even  the 
infinitesimal  quantities  which  compose  the  terms  of  the  equa 
tions  of  nature.  But  some  swift  rivers,  rolling  mountains  of 
fine  earth,  discharge  themselves  into  deeply  scooped  gulfs  or 
bays,  and  in  such  cases  the  deposit  amounts,  in  the  course  of  a 
few  years,  to  a  mass  the  transfer  of  which  from  the  surface  of  a 
large  basin,  and  its  accumulation  at  a  single  point,  may  be 

week'3  rain  had  been  drenching  the  ground,  and  though  the  surface  was 
whitened  with  snow,  and  though  pools  of  water  were  standing  upon  the 
surface  in  the  immediate  neighborhood,  still  the  everlasting  subterranean 
fire  was  burning,  and  the  smoke  arising  through  the  snow." 


548  NATURE   KNOWS   NO   TRIFLES. 

supposed  to  produce  other  effects  than  those  measurable  by 
the  sounding  line.  Now,  almost  all  the  operations  of  rural 
life,  as  I  have  abundantly  shown,  increase  the  liability  of  the 
soil  to  erosion  by  water.  Hence,  the  clearing  of  the  valley  of 
the  Ganges  by  man  must  have  much  augmented  the  quantity 
of  earth  transported  by  that  river  to  the  sea,  and  of  course 
have  strengthened  the  effects,  whatever  they  may  be,  of  thick 
ening  the  crust  of  the  earth  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal.  In  such 
cases,  then,  human  action  must  rank  among  geological  in 
fluences. 

Nothing  Small  in  Nature. 

It  is  a  legal  maxim  that  "  the  law  concerneth  not  itself 
with  trifles,"  de  minimus  non  curat  lex  ;  but  in  the  vocabulary 
of  nature,  little  and  great  are  terms  of  comparison  only ;  she 
knows  no  trifles,  and  her  laws  are  as  inflexible  in  dealing  with 
an  atom  as  with  a  continent  or  a  planet.*  The  human  opera- 

*  One  of  the  sublimest,  and  at  the  same  time  most  fearful  suggestions 
that  have  been  prompted  by  the  researches  of  modern  science,  was  made 
by  Babbage  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  his  Ninth  Bridgewater  Treatise.  I 
have  not  the  volume  at  hand,  but  the  following  explanation  will  recall  to  the 
reader,  if  it  does  not  otherwise  make  intelligible,  the  suggestion  I  refer  to. 

No  atom  can  be  disturbed  in  place,  or  undergo  any  change  of  temper 
ature,  of  electrical  state,  or  other  material  condition,  without  affecting,  by 
attraction  or  repulsion  or  other  communication,  the  surrounding  atoms. 
These,  again,  by  the  same  law,  transmit  the  influence  to  other  atoms,  and 
the  impulse  thus  given  extends  through  the  whole  material  universe. 
Every  human  movement,  every  organic  act,  every  volition,  passion,  or 
emotion,  every  intellectual  process,  is  accompanied  with  atomic  disturbance, 
and  hence  every  such  movement,  every  such  act  or  process  affects  all  the 
atoms  of  universal  matter.  Though  action  and  reaction  are  equal,  yet  re 
action  does  not  restore  disturbed  atoms  to  their  former  place  and  condition, 
and  consequently  the  effects  of  the  least  material  change  are  never  can 
celled,  but  in  some  way  perpetuated,  so  that  no  action  can  take  place  in 
physical,  moral,  or  intellectual  nature,  without  leaving  all  matter  in  a  dif 
ferent  state  from  what  it  would  have  been  if  such  action  had  not  occurred. 
Hence,  to  use  language  which  I  have  employed  on  another  occasion :  there 
exists,  not  alone  in  the  human  conscience  or  in  the  omniscience  of  the 
Creator,  but  in  external  material  nature,  an  ineffaceable,  imperishable 


MAN   AND  NATURE.  549 

tions  mentioned  in  the  last  few  paragraphs,  therefore,  do  act  in 
the  ways  ascribed  to  them,  though  our  limited  faculties  are  at 
present,  perhaps  forever,  incapable  of  weighing  their  imme 
diate,  still  more  their  ultimate  consequences.  But  our  inabil 
ity  to  assign  definite  values  to  these  causes  of  the  disturbance 
of  natural  arrangements  is  not  a  reason  for  ignoring  the  exist 
ence  of  such  causes  in  any  general  view  of  the  relations  be 
tween  man  and  nature,  and  we  are  never  justified  in  assuming 
a  force  to  be  insignificant  because  its  measure  is  unknown,  or 
even  because  no  physical  effect  can  now  be  traced  to  it  as  its 
origin.  The  collection  of  phenomena  must  precede  the  analy 
sis  of  them,  and  every  new  fact,  illustrative  of  the  action  and 
reaction  between  humanity  and  the  material  world  around  it, 
is  another  step  toward  the  determination  of  the  great  question, 
whether  man  is  of  nature  or  above  her. 

record,  possibly  legible  even  to  created  intelligence,  of  every  act  done, 
every  word  uttered,  nay,  of  every  wish  and  purpose  and  thought  conceived 
by  mortal  man,  from  the  birth  of  our  first  parent  to  the  final  extinction  of 
our  race  ;  so  that  the  physical  traces  of  our  most  secret  sins  shall  last  until 
time  shall  be  merged  in  that  eternity  of  which  not  science,  but  religion 
alone,  assumes  to  take  cognizance. 


APPENDIX. 


No.  1  (page  19,  note).  IT  may  be  said  that  the  cases  referred  to  in  the 
note  on  p.  19 — and  indeed  all  cases  of  a  supposed  acclimation  consisting  in 
physiological  changes — are  instances  of  the  origination  of  new  varieties  by 
natural  selection,  the  hardier  maize,  tomato,  and  other  vegetables  of  the 
North,  being  the  progeny  of  seeds  of  individuals  endowed,  exceptionally, 
with  greater  power  of  resisting  cold  than  belongs  in  general  to  the  species 
which  produced  them.  But,  so  far  as  the  evidence  of  change  of  climate, 
from  a  difference  in  vegetable  growth,  is  concerned,  it  is  immaterial  whe 
ther  we  adopt  this  view  or  maintain  the  older  and  more  familiar  doctrine 
of  a  local  modification  of  character  in  the  plants  in  question. 

No.  2  (page  24,  note).  The  adjectives  of  direction  in  -erly  are  not  unfre- 
quently  used  to  indicate,  in  a  loose  way,  the  course  of  winds  blowing  from 
unspecified  points  between  N.  E.  and  S.  E. ;  S.  E.  and  S.  W. ;  S.  W.  and 
N.  "W.  or  N.  W.  and  N.  E.  If  the  employment  of  these  words  were  under 
stood  to  be  limited  to  thus  expressing  a  direction  nearer  to  the  cardinal 
point  from  whose  name  the  adjective  is  taken  than  to  any  other  cardinal 
point,  they  would  be  valuable  elements  of  English  meteorological  nomen 
clature. 

No.  3  (page  31).  I  find  a  confirmation  of  my  observations  on  the  habits 
of  the  beaver  as  a  geographical  agency,  in  a  report  of  the  proceedings  of 
the  British  Association,  in  the  London  Atheneeum  of  October  8,  1864,  p. 
469.  It  is  there  stated  that  Viscount  Milton  and  Dr.  Cheadle,  in  an  expe 
dition  across  the  Rocky  Mountains  by  the  Yellow  Head,  or  Leather  Pass, 
observed  that  "a great  portion  of  the  country  to  the  east  of  the  moun 
tains  "  had  been  "  completely  changed  in  character  by  the  agency  of  the 
beaver,  which  formerly  existed  here  in  enormous  numbers.  The  shallow 
valleys  were  formerly  traversed  by  rivers  and  chains  of  lakes  which,  dam 
med  up  along  their  course  at  numerous  points,  by  the  work  of  those  ani 
mals,  have  become  a  series  of  marshes  in  various  stages  of  consolidation. 
So  complete  has  this  change  been,  that  hardly  a  stream  is  found  for  a 


552  APPENDIX. 

distance  of  two  hundred  miles,  with  the  exception  of  the  large  rivers.  The 
animals  have  thus  destroyed,  by  their  own  labors,  the  waters  necessary 
to  their  own  existence." 

When  the  process  of  "consolidation"  shall  have  been  completed,  and 
the  forest  reestablished  upon  the  marshes,  the  water  now  diffused  through 
them  will  be  collected  in  the  lower  or  more  yielding  portions,  cut  new 
channels  for  their  flow,  become  running  brooks,  and  thus  restore  the  an 
cient  aspect  of  the  surface. 

No.  4  (page  33,  note).  The  lignivorous  insects  that  attack  living  trees 
almost  uniformly  confine  their  ravages  to  trees  already  unsound  or  dis 
eased  in  growth  from  the  depredations  of  leaf-eaters,  such  as  caterpillars 
and  the  like,  or  from  other  causes.  The  decay  of  the  tree,  therefore,  is  the 
cause  not  the  consequence  of  the  invasions  of  the  borer.  This  subject  has 
been  discussed  by  Ferris  in  the  Annales  de  la  Societe  Entomologique  de  la 
France  for  1851  (?),  and  his  conclusions  are  confirmed  by  the  observations 
of  Samanos,  who  quotes,  at  some  length,  the  views  of  Ferris.  "  Having, 
for  fifteen  years,"  says  the  latter  author,  "  incessantly  studied  the  habits 
of  lignivorous  insects  in  one  of  the  best  wooded  regions  of  France,  I  have 
observed  facts  enough  to  feel  myself  warranted  in  expressing  my  conclu 
sions,  which  are:  that  insects  in  general — I  am  not  speaking  of  those 
which  confine  their  voracity  to  the  leaf — do  not  attack  trees  in  sound 
health,  and  they  assail  those  only  whose  normal  conditions  and  functions 
have  been  by  some  cause  impaired." 

See,  more  fully,  Samanos,  Traite  de  la  Culture  du  Pin  Maritime,  Paris, 
1864,  pp.  140-145. 

No.  5  (page  34,  note).  Very  interesting  observations,  on  the  agency  of 
the  squirrel  and  other  small  animals  in  planting  and  in  destroying  nuts  and 
other  seeds  of  trees,  may  be  found  in  a  paper  on  the  Succession  of  Forests 
in  Thoreau's  Excursions,  pp.  135  et  seqq. 

I  once  saw  several  quarts  of  beeeh-nuts  taken  from  the  winter  quarters 
of  a  family  of  flying  squirrels  in  a  hollow  tree.  The  kernels  were  neatly 
stripped  of  their  shells  and  carefully  stored  in  a  dry  cavity. 

No.  6  (page  40,  note).  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk,  in  Ilet  VerscMl  tmschen 
den  PsycliiscJien  Aanlegvan  het  Dier  e?ivan  denMenscft,  cites  from  Burdach 
and  other  authorities  many  interesting  facts  respecting  instincts  lost,  or 
newly  developed  and  become  hereditary,  in  the  lower  animals,  and  he 
quotes  Aristotle  and  Pliny  as  evidence  that  the  common  quadrupeds  and 
fowls  of  our  fields  and  our  poultry  yards  were  much  less  perfectly  domes 
ticated  in  their  times  than  long,  long  ages  of  servitude  have  now  made 
them. 

Perhaps  the  half-wild  character  ascribed  by  P.  La3stadius  and  other 
Swedish  writers  to  the  reindeer  of  Lapland,  may  be  in  some  degree  due  to 
the  comparative  shortness  of  the  period  during  which  he  has  been  partially 


APPENDIX.  553 

tamed.  The  domestic  swine  bred  in  the  woods  of  Hungary  and  the  buffa 
loes  of  Southern  Italy  are  so  wild  and  savage  as  to  be  very  dangerous  to 
all  but  their  keepers.  The  former  have  relapsed  into  their  original  condi 
tion,  the  latter  have  not  yet  been  reclaimed  from  it. 

Among  other  instances  of  obliterated  instincts,  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk 
states  that  in  Holland,  Avhere,  for  centuries,  the  young  of  the  cow  has 
been  usually  taken  from  the  dam  at  birth  and  fed  by  hand,  calves,  even  if 
left  with  the  mother,  make  no  attempt  to  suck ;  while  in  England,  where 
calves  are  not  weaned  until  several  weeks  old,  they  resort  to  the  udder  as 
naturally  as  the  young  of  wild  quadrupeds. — Ziel  en  Ligchaam,\>.  128,  n. 

Xo.  7  (page  60,  first  note).  At  Pie  di  Mulera,  at  the  outlet  of  the  Yal 
Anzasca,  near  the  principal  hotel,  is  a  vine  measuring  thirty-one  inches  in 
circumference.  The  door  of  the  chapter-hall  in  the  cloister  of  the  church 
of  San  Giovanni,  at  Saluzzo,  is  of  vine  wood,  and  the  boards  of  which  the 
panels  were  made  could  not  have  been  less  than  ten  inches  wide.  Statues 
and  other  objects  of  considerable  dimensions,  of  vine  wood,  are  mentioned 
by  ancient  writers. 

No.  8  (page  6,  second  note).  Oartier,  A.  D.  1535-'6,  mentions  "  vines, 
great  melons,  cucumbers,  gourds  [courges],  pease,  beans  of  various  colors, 
but  not  like  ours,"  as  common  among  the  Indians  of  the  banks  of  the  St. 
Lawrence.— Bref  Recit,  etc.,  reprint.  Paris,  1863,  pp.  13,  a;  14,  b;  20, 
b;  31,  a. 

No.  8  (page  63,  second  paragraph).  It  may  be  considered  very  highly 
probable,  if  not  certain,  that  the  undiscriminating  herbalists  of  the  six 
teenth  century  must  have  overlooked  many  plants  native  to  this  island. 
An  English  botanist,  in  an  hour's  visit  to  Aden,  discovered  several  species 
of  plants  on  rocks  always  reported,  even  by  scientific  travellers,  as  abso 
lutely  barren.  But  after  all,  it  appears  to  be  well  established  that  the 
original  flora  of  St.  Helena  was  extremely  limited,  though  now  counting 
hundreds  of  species. 

No.  9  (page  66,  first  note).  Although  the  vine  genus  is  very  catholic  and 
cosmopolite  in  its  habits,  yet  particular  varieties  are  extremely  fastidious 
and  exclusive  in  their  requirements  as  to  soil  and  climate.  The  stocks  of 
many  celebrated  vineyards  lose  their  peculiar  qualities  by  transplantation, 
and  the  most  famous  wines  are  capable  of  production  only  in  certain  well- 
defined,  and  for  the  most  part  narrow  districts.  The  Ionian  vine  which 
bears  the  little  stoneles^  grape  known  in  commerce  as  the  Zante  currant, 
has  resisted  almost  all  efforts  to  naturalize  it  elsewhere,  and  is  scarcely 
grown  except  in  two  or  three  of  the  Ionian  islands  and  in  a  narrow  terri 
tory  on  the  northern  shores  of  the  Morea. 

No.  10  (page  68,  first  note).  In  most  of  the  countries  of  Southern 
Europe,  sheep  and  beeves  are  wintered  upon  the  plains,  but  driven  in  the 
summer  to  mountain  pastures  at  many  days'  distance  from  the  homesteads 


554  APPENDIX. 

of  their  owners.  They  transport  seeds  in  their  coats  in  both  directions, 
and  hence  Alpine  plants  often  shoot  up  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains,  the 
grasses  of  the  plain  on  the  borders  of  the  glaciers  ;  but  in  both  cases,  they 
usually  fail  to  propagate  themselves  by  ripening  their  soed.  This  explains 
the  scattered  tufts  of  common  clover,  with  pale  and  flaccid  blossoms,  which 
are  sometimes  seen  at  heights  exceeding  7,000  feet  above  the  sea. 

No.  11  (page  78,  last  paragraph).  The  poisonous  wild  parsnip,  which 
is  very  common  in  New  England,  is  popularly  believed  to  be  identical  with 
the  garden  parsnip,  and  differenced  only  by  conditions  of  growth,  a  richer 
soil  depriving  it,  it  is  said,  of  its  noxious  properties.  Many  wild  medicinal 
plants,  such  as  pennyroyal  for  example,  are  so  much  less  aromatic  and 
powerful,  when  cultivated  in  gardens,  than  when  self-sown  on  meagre  soils, 
as  to  be  hardly  fit  for  use. 

No.  12  (page  74,  second  note).  See  in  Thoreau's  Excursions,  an  interest 
ing  description  of  the  wild  apple-trees  of  Massachusetts. 

No.  13  (page  86,  first  paragraph).  It  is  said  at  Courmayeur  that  a 
very  few  ibexes  of  a  larger  variety  than  those  of  the  Cogue  mountains,  still 
linger  about  the  Grande  Jorasse. 

No.  14  (page  92,  first  note).  In  Northern  and  Central  Italy,  one  often 
sees  hillocks  crowned  with  grove-like  plantations  of  small  trees,  much  re 
sembling  large  arbors.  These  serve  to  collect  birds,  which  are  entrapped  i:i 
nets  in  great  numbers.  These  plantations  are  culled  ragnaje,  and  the 
reader  will  find,  in  Bindi's  edition  of  Davanzati,  a  very  pleasant  descrip 
tion  of  a  ragnaja,  though  its  authorship  is  not  now  ascribed  to  that  emi 
nent-  writer. 

No.  15  (page  93,  second  note).  The  appearance  of  the  dove-like  grouse, 
Tetrao  paradoxus,  or  Syrrhaptes  Palla&ii,  in  various  parts  of  Europe,  in 
1859  and  the  following  years,  is  a  noticeable  exception  to  the  law  of 
regularity  which  seems  to  govern  the  movements  and  determine  the  habitat 
of  birds.  The  proper  home  of  this  bird  is  the  steppes  of  Tartary,  and  it  is 
not  recorded  to  have  been  observed  in  Europe,  or  at  least  west  of  Russia, 
until  the  year  abovementioned,  when  many  flocks  of  twenty  or  thirty,  and 
even  a  hundred  individuals,  were  seen  in  Bohemia,  Germany,  Holland, 
Denmark,  England,  Ireland,  and  France.  A  considerable  flock  frequented 
the  Frisian  island  of  Borkum  for  more  than  five  months.  It  was  hoped  they 
would  breed  and  remain  permanently  in  the  island,  but  this  expectation 
has  been  disappointed,  and  the  steppe-grouse  seems  to  have  disappeared 
again  altogether. 

No.  10  (page  94,  note).  From  an  article  by  A.  Esquiros,  in  the  Remie 
dcs  De  x  .Uondes  for  Sept.  ],  1864,  entitled,  La  me  Anylaise,  p.  119,  it 
appears  that  such  occurrences  as  that  stated  in  the  note  are  not  unfrequent 
on  the  British  coast. 


APPENDIX.  555 

No.  17  (page  100,  first  paragraph).  I  cannot  learn  that  caprification  is 
now  practised  in  Italy,  but  it  is  still  in  use  in  Greece. 

No.  18  (page  112,  first  note).  The  recent  great  multiplication  of  vipers 
in  some  parts  of  France,  is  a  singular  and  startling  fact. 

Toussenel,  quoting  from  official  documents,  states,  that  upon  the  offer 
of  a  reward  of  fifty  centimes,  or  ten  cents,  a  head,  ticelve  thousand  vipers 
were  brought  to  the  prefect  of  a  single  department  and  that  in  1859  fifteen 
hundred  snakes  and  twenty  quarts  of  snakes'  eggs  were  found  under  a 
farm-house  hearthstone.  The  granary,  the  stables,  the  roof,  the  very  beds 
swarmed  with  serpents,  and  the  family  were  obliged  to  abandon  its  habi 
tation.  Dr.  Viaugrand  mantis,  of  Nantes,  reported  to  the  prefect  of  his  de 
partment  more  than  two  hundred  recent  cases  of  viper  bites,  twenty-four 
of  which  proved  fatal. — Tristia,  p.  176  et  seqq. 

Xo.  19  (page  121,  first  note).  The  Beduins  are  little  given  to  the  chase, 
and  seldom  make  war  on  the  game  birds  and  quadrupeds  of  the  desert. 
Hence  the  wild  animals  of  Arabia  are  less  timid  than  those  of  Europe.  On 
one  occasion,  when  I  was  encamped  during  a  sand  storm  of  some  violence 
in  Arabia  Petraja,  a  wild  pigeon  took  refuge  in  one  of  our  tents  which  had 
not  been  blown  down,  and  remained  quietly  perched  on  a  boy  in  the  midst 
of  four  or  five  persons,  until  the  storm  was  over,  and  then  took  his  depar 
ture,  insalutato  hospite. 

No.  20  (page  122).  It  is  possible  that  time  may  modify  the  habits  of 
the  fresh  water  fish  of  the  North  American  States,  and  accommodate  them 
to  the  new  physical  conditions  of  their  native  waters.  Hence  it  may  be 
hoped  that  nature,  even  unaided  by  art,  will  do  something  toward  restor 
ing  the  ancient  plenty  of  our  lakes  and  rivers.  The  decrease  of  our  fresh 
water  fish  cannot  be  ascribed  alone  to  exhaustion  by  fishing,  for  in  the 
waters  of  the  valleys  and  flanks  of  the  Alps,  which  have  been  inhabited 
and  fished  ten  times  as  long  by  a  denser  population,  fish  are  still  very 
abundant,  and  they  thrive  and  multiply  under  circumstances  where  no 
American  species  could  live  at  all.  On  the  southern  slope  of  those  moun 
tains,  trout  are  caught  in  great  numbers,  in  the  swift  streams  which  rush 
from  the  glaciers,  and  where  the  water  is  of  icy  coldness,  and  so  turbid 
with  particles  of  fine-ground  rock,  that  you  cannot  see  an  inch  below  the 
surface.  The  glacier  streams  of  Switzerland,  however,  are  less  abundant 
in  fish. 

No.  21  (page  131,  note).  Vaupell,  though  agreeing  with  olher  writers 
as  to  the  injury  done  to  the  forest  by  most  domestic  animals — which  he 
illustrates  in  an  interesting  way  in  his  posthumous  work,  The  Danish 
Woe/da — thinks,  nevertheless,  that  at  the  season  when  the  mast  is  falling 
swine  are  rather  useful  than  otherwise  to  forests  of  beech  and  oak,  by 
treading  into  the  ground  and  thus  sowing  beechnuts  and  acorns,  and  by 
destroying  moles  and  mice. — De  Danske  Store,  p.  12. 


556  APPENDIX. 

No.  22  (page  135,  note).  The  able  authors  of  Humphreys  and  Abbot's 
most  valuable  Report  on  the  Physics  and  Hydraulics  of  the  Mississippi, 
conclude  that  the  delta  of  that  river  began  its  encroachments  on  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico  not  more  than  4,400  years  ago,  before  which  period  they  sup 
pose  the  Mississippi  to  have  been  "a  comparatively  clear  stream,"  convey 
ing  Very  little  sediment  to  the  sea.  The  present  rate  of  advance  of  the 
delta  is  262  feet  a  year,  and  there  are  reasons  for  thinking  that  the  amount 
of  deposit  has  long  been  approximately  constant. — Report,  pp.  435,  436. 

The  change  in  the  character  of  the  river  must,  if  this  opinion  is  well 
founded,  be  due  to  some  geological  revolution,  or  at  least  convulsion,  and 
the  hypothesis  of  the  former  existence  of  one  or  more  great  lakes  in  its 
upper  valley,  whose  bottoms  are  occupied  by  the  present  prairie  region, 
has  been  suggested.  The  shores  of  these  supposed  lakes  have  not,  I  be 
lieve,  been  traced,  or  even  detected,  and  we  cannot  admit  the  truth  of  this 
hypothesis  without  supposing  changes  much  more  extensive  than  the  mere 
bursting  of  the  barrier  which  confined  the  waters. 

No.  23  (page  143,  note).  See  on  this  subject  a  paper  by  J.  Jarain,  in  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  for  Sept.  15,  1864;  and,  on  the  effects  of  human 
industry  on  the  atmosphere,  an  article  in  Aus  der  Natur,  vol.  29,  1864,  pp. 
443,  449,  465  et  seqq. 

No.  24  (page  159,  second  paragraph).  All  evergreens,  even  the  broad- 
leaved  trees,  resist  frosts  of  extraordinary  severity  better  than  the  decid 
uous  trees  of  the  same  climate?.  Is  not  this  because  the  vital  processes 
of  trees  of  persistent  foliage  are  less  interrupted  during  winter  than  those 
of  trees  which  annually  shed  their  leaves,  and  therefore  more  organic  heat 
is  developed  \ 

No.  25  (page  191,  Jirst  paragraph).  In  discussing  the  influence  of 
mountains  on  precipitation,  meteorologists  have  generally  treated  the 
popular  belief,  that  mountains  "  attract"  to  them  clouds  floating  within  a 
certain  distance  from  them,  as  an  ignorant  prejudice,  and  they  ascribe  the 
appearance  of  clouds  about  high  peaks  solely  to  the  condensation  of  the 
humidity  of  the  air  carried  by  atmospheric  currents  up  the  slopes  of  the 
mountain  to  a  colder  temperature.  But  if  mountains  do  not  really  draw 
clouds  and  invisible  vapors  to  them,  they  are  an  exception  to  the  universal 
law  of  attraction.  The  attraction  of  the  small  Mount  Shehallien  was  found 
sufficient  to  deflect  from  the  perpendicular,  by  a  measurable  quantity,  a 
plummet  weighing  but  a  few  ounces.  AVhy,  then,  should  not  greater  masses 
attract  to  them  volumes  of  vapor  weighing  hundreds  of  tons,  and  floating 
freely  in  the  atmosphere  within  moderate  distances  of  the  mountains? 

No.  26  (page  198,  note),  filisee  Redus  ascribes  the  diminution  of  the 
ponds  which  border  the  dunes  of  Gascony  to  the  absorption  of  their  water 
by  the  trees  which  have  been  planted  upon  the  sands. — Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  I  Aug.,  1863,  p.  694. 


APPENDIX.  557 

JSTo.  27  (page  219,  note).  The  waste  of  wood  in  European  carpentry  was 
formerly  enormous,  the  beams  of  houses  being  both  larger  and  more 
numerous  than  permanence  or  stability  required.  In  examining  the  con 
struction  of  the  houses  occupied  by  the  eighty  families  which  inhabit  the 
village  oi'Faucigny,  in  Savoy,  in  1854,  the  forest  inspector  found  that  fifty 
thousand  trees  had  been  employed  in  building  them.  Tiie  builders  "  seem 
ed,"  s  ivs  Iludry-Menos,  "to  have  tried  to  solve  the  problem  of  piling  upon 
the  walls  the  largest  quantity  of  timber  possible  without  crushing  them." 
— Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  1  June,  1864,  p.  001. 

Xo.  28  (page  231,  note).  In  a  remarkable  pamphlet,  to  which  I  shall 
have  occasion  to  refer  more  than  once  hereafter,  entitled  Avant-projet  pour 
la  creation  d>un  sol  fertile  a  la  surface  des  Landcs  de  Gascogne,  Duponchel 
argues  with  much  force,  that  the  fertilizing  properties  of  river-slime  are 
generally  due  much  more  to  its  mineral  than  to  its  vegetable  constit 
uents. 

Xo.  29  (page  265,  note).  Even  the  denser  silicious  stones  are  pene 
trable  by  fluids  and  the  coloring  matter  they  contain,  to  such  an  extent 
that  agates  and  other  forms  of  silex  may  be  artificially  stained  through 
their  substance.  This  art  was  known  to  and  practised  by  the  ancient  lapi 
daries,  and  it  has  been  revived  in  recent  times. 

Xo.  80  (page  288).  There  is  good  reason  for  thinking  that  many  of  the 
earth  and  rock  slides  in  the  Alps  occurred  at  an  earlier  period  than  the 
origin  of  the  forest  vegetation  which,  in  later  ages,  covered  the  flanks  of 
those  mountains.  See  Bericht  uber  die  Untersuchung  der  SchweizeriscJien 
Hochgebirgswald-ungen.  1862.  P.  61. 

Where  more  recent  slides  have  been  again  clothed  with  woods,  the 
trees,  shrubs,  and  smaller  plants  which  spontaneously  grow  upon  them 
are  usually  of  different  species  from  those  observed  upon  soil  displaced  at 
remote  periods.  This  dilference  is  so  marked  that  the  site  of  a  slide  can 
often  be  recognized  at  a  great  distance  by  the  general  color  of  the  foliage 
of  its  vegetation. 

Xo.  31  (page  286,  note).  It  should  have  been  observed  that  the  ven 
omous  principle  of  poisonous  mushrooms  is  not  decomposed  and  rendered 
innocent  by  the  process  described  in  the  note.  It  is  merely  extracted  by 
the  acidulated  or  saline  water  employed  for  soaking  the  plants,  and  care 
should  be  taken  that  this  water  be  thrown  away  out  of  the  reach  of  mischief. 

Xo.  32  (page  293,  note).  Gaudry  estimates  the  ties  employed  in  the 
railways  of  France  at  thirty  millions,  to  supply  which  not  less  than  two 
millions  of  large  trees  have  been  felled.  The?e  ties  have  been,  upon  the 
average,  at  least  once  renewed,  and  hence  we  must  double  the  number 
of  ties  and  of  trees  required  to  furnish  them.— -Revue  des  Deux  Jfond€8,15 
July,  1863,  p.  425. 

No.  33  (page  294,  second  paragraph  of  note).  After  all,  the  present  con- 


558  APPENDIX. 

sumption  of  Yvrood  and  timber  for  fuel  and  other  domestic  and  rural  pur 
poses,  in  many  parts  of  Europe,  seems  incredibly  small  to  an  American.  Ill 
rural  Switzerland,  the  whole  supply  of  firewood,  fuel  for  small  smhheries, 
dairies,  breweries,  brick  and  lime  kilns,  distilleries,  fences,  furniture,  tools, 
and  even  house  building — exclusive  of  the  small  quantity  derived  from  the 
trimmings  of  fruit  trees,  grape  vines  and  hedges,  and  from  decayed  fences 
and  buildings — does  not  exceed  an  average  of  two  hundred  and  thirty  cubic 
feet,  or  less  than  two  cords,  a  year  per  household.  The  average  consump 
tion  of  wood  in  New  England  for  domestic  fuel  alone,  is  from  five  to  ten 
times  as  much  as  Swiss  families  require  for  all  the  uses  above  enumerated. 
But  the  existing  habitations  of  Switzerland  are  sufficient  for  a  population 
which  increases  but  slowly,  and  in  the  peasants1  houses  but  a  single  room 
is  usually  heated.  See  Bericht  uber  die  UntersucJiung  der  Scliwciz.  Hoch- 
gebirgswaldungeji,  pp.  85-89. 

No.  34  (page  304).  Among  more  recent  manuals  maybe  mentioned: 
Les  Etudes  de  Maitre  Pierre.  Paris,  1864.  12mo  ;  BAZELAIEE,  Traite  de 
Reboisement.  2d  edition,  Paris,  1864 ;  and,  in  Italian,  SIEMOXI,  Manuale 
teorico-pratico  d^arte  Forestale.  Firenze,  1864.  8vo.  A  very  important 
work  has  lately  been  published  in  France  by  Viscount  de  Courval,  which 
is  known  to  me  only  by  a  German  translation  published  at  Berlin,  in  1864, 
under  the  title,  Das  Avfdsten  der  Waldbdume.  The  principal  feature  of 
De  Courval's  very  successful  system  of  sylviculture,  is  a  mode  of  trimming 
which  compels  the  tree  to  develop  the  stem  by  reducing  the  lateral  ramifi 
cation.  Beginning  with  young  trees,  the  buds  are  rubbed  off  from  the 
stems,  and  superfluous  lateral  shoots  are  pruned  down  to  the  trunk.  When 
large  trees  are  taken  in  hand,  branches  which  can  be  spared,  and  whose 
removal  is  necessary  to  obtain  a  proper  length  of  stem,  are  very  smoothly 
cut  off  quite  close  to  the  trunk,  and  the  exposed  surface  is  immediately 
brushed  over  with  mineral-coal  tar.  When  thus  treated,  it  is  said  that  the 
healing  of  the  wound  is  perfect,  and  without  any  decay  of  the  tree. 

No.  35  (page  313).  The  most  gorgeous  autumnal  coloring  I  have  ob 
served  in  the  vegetation  of  Europe,  has  been  in  the  valleys  of  the  Durance 
and  its  tributaries  in  Dauphiny.  I  must  admit  that  neither  in  variety  nor 
in  purity  and  brilliancy  of  tint,  does  this  coloring  fall  much,  if  at  all,  short 
of  that  of  the  New  England  woods.  But  there  is  this  difference  :  in 
Dauphiny,  it  is  only  in  small  shrubs  that  this  rich  painting  is  seen,  while 
in  North  America  the  foliage  of  large  trees  is  dyed  in  full  splendor. 
Hence  the  American  woodland  has  fewer  broken  lights  and  more  of  what 
painters  call  breadth  of  coloring.  Besides  this,  the  arrangement  of  the 
leafage  in  large  globular  or  conical  masses,  affords  a  wider  scale  of  light 
and  shade,  thus  aiding  now  the  gradation,  now  the  contrast  of  tint?,  and 
gives  the  American  October  landscape  a  softer  and  more  harmonious  tone 
than  marks  the  humble  shrubbery  of  the  forest  hill-sides  of  Dauphiny. 


APPENDIX.  559 

Thorenu — who  was  not,  like  some  very  celebrated  landscape  critics  of 
the  present  day,  an  outside  spectator  of  the  action  and  products  of  natural 
forces,  but,  in  the  old  religious  sense,  an  observer  of  organic  nature,  living, 
more  than  almost  any  other  descriptive  writer,  among  and  with  her  chil 
dren — has  a  very  eloquent  paper  on  the  "Autumnal  Tints"  of  the  New 
England  landscape. — See  his  Excursions,  pp.  215  et  seqq. 

Few  men  have  personally  noticed  so  many  facts  in  natural  history  ac 
cessible  to  unscientific  observation  as  Thoreau,  and  yet  he  had  never  seen 
that  very  common  and  striking  spectacle,  the  phosphorescence  of  decaying 
wood,  until,  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  it  caught  his  attention  in  a 
bivouac  in  the  forests  of  Maine.  He  seems  to  have  been  more  excited  by 
this  phenomenon  than  by  any  other  described  in  his  works.  It  must  be  a 
capacious  eye  that  takes  in  all  the  visible  facts  in  the  history  of  the  most 
familiar  natural  object. — The  Maine  Woods,  p.  184. 

"The  luminous  appearance  of  bodies  projected  against  the  sky  adjacent 
to  the  rising  "  or  setting  sun,  so  well  described  in  Professor  decker's  Let 
ter  to  Sir  David  Brewster,  is,  as  Tyndall  observes,  "hardly  ever  seen  by 
either  guides  or  travellers,  though  it  would  seem,  prima,  facie,  that  it  must 
be  of  frequent  occurrence."  See  TYNDALL,  Glaciers  of  the  Alps.  Parti. 
Second  ascent  of  Mont  Blanc. 

Judging  from  my  own  observation,  however,  I  should  much  doubt 
whether  this  brilliant  phenomenon  can  be  so  often  seen  in  perfection  as 
would  be  expected ;  for  I  have  frequently  sought  it  in  vain  at  the  foot 
of  the  Alps,  under  conditions  apparently  otherwise  identical  with  those 
where,  iu  the  elevated  Alpine  valleys,  it  shows  itself  in  the  greatest 
splendor. 

No.  3G  (page  324).  European  poets,  whose  knowledge  of  the  date  palm 
is  not  founded  on  personal  observation,  often  describe  its  trunk  as  not  only 
slender,  but  particularly  straight.  Nothing  can  be  farther  from  the  truth. 
When  the  Orientals  compare  the  form  of  a  beautiful  girl  to  the  stem  of  the 
palm,  they  do  not  represent  it  as  rigidly  straight,  but  on  the  contrary  as 
made  up  of  graceful  curves,  which  seem  less  like  permanent  outlines  than 
like  flowing  motion.  In  a  palm  grove,  the  trunks,  so  far  from  standing 
planted  upright  like  the  candles  of  a  chandelier,  bend  in  a  vast  variety  of 
curves,  now  leaning  towards,  now  diverging  from,  now  crossing,  each 
other,  and  among  a  hundred  you  will  hardly  see  two  whose  axes  are 
parallel. 

No.  37  (page  316,  first  note).  Charles  Martin  ascribes  the  power  of  re 
production  by  shoots  from  the  stump  to  the  cedar  of  Mount  Atlas,  which 
appears  to  be  identical  with  the  cedar  of  Lebanon. — Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
15  July,  1864,  p.  315. 

No.  38  (page  332).  In  an  interesting  article  on  recent  internal  improve 
ments  in  England,  in  the  London  Quarterly  Review  for  January,  1858,  it 


560  APPENDIX. 

is  related  that  in  a  single  rock  cutting  on  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester 
railway,  480,000  cubic  yards  of  stone  were  removed ;  that  the  earth  ex 
cavated  and  removed  in  the  construction  of  English  railways  up  to  tha* 
date,  amounted  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  million  cubic  yards,  and  that  at  th«» 
Round  Down  ClitF,  near  Dover,  a  single  blast  of  nineteen  thousand  pound? 
of  powder  blew  down  a  thousand  million  tons  of  chalk,  and  covereO 
fifteen  acres  of  land  with  the  fragments. 

No.  39  (page  339).  According  to  Reventlov,  whose  work  is  one  of  the 
best  sources  of  information  on  the  subject  of  diking-in  tide-washed  flats, 
Salicornia  lierbacea  appears  as  soon  as  the  flat  is  raised  high  enough  to  be 
dry  for  three  hours  at  ordinary  ebb  tide,  or,  in  other  words,  where  the 
ordinary  flood  covers  it  to  a  depth  of  not  more  than  two  feet.  At  a  flood 
depth  of  one  foot,  the  Salicornia  dies  and  is  succeeded  by  various  sand 
plants.  These  are  followed  by  Poa  dislans  and  Poa  maritima  as  the 
ground  is  raised  by  further  deposits,  and  these  plants  finally  by  common 
grasses.  The  Salicornia  is  preceded  by  conferees,  growing  in  deeper  water, 
which  spread  over  the  bottom,  and  when  covered  by  a  fresh  deposit  of 
slime  reappear  above  it,  and  thus  vegetable  and  alluvial  strata  alternate 
until  the  flat  is  raised  sufficiently  high  for  the  growth  of  Salicornia. —  Om 
MarsMannelsen  paa  Vesfkysten  afllertitgddmmet  Slesvig,  pp.  7,  8. 

No.  40  (page  348,  note).  The  drijftil  employed  for  the  ring  dike  of  the 
Lake  of  Haarlem,  was  in  part  cut  in  sections  fifty  feet  long  by  six  or  seven 
wide,  and  these  were  navigated  like  rafts  to  the  spot  where  they  were 
sunk  to  form  the  dike. — EMILE  DE  LAVELEYE,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  15 
Sept.,  1863,  p.  285. 

No.  41  (page  352,  last  paragraph).  See  on  the  influence  of  the  improve 
ments  in  question  on  tidal  and  other  marine  currents,  Staring,  De  Bodem 
van  Nederland,  I.  p.  279. 

Although  the  dikes  of  the  Netherlands  and  the  adjacent  states  have 
protected  a  considerable  extent  of  coast  from  the  encroachments  of  the 
sea,  and  have  won.  a  large  tract  of  cultivable  land  from  the  dominion  of 
the  waters,  it  has  been  questioned  whether  a  different  method  of  accom 
plishing  these  objects  might  not  have  been  adopted  with  advantage.  It 
has  been  suggested  that  a  system  of  inland  dikes  and  canals,  upon  the  prin 
ciple  of  those  which,  as  will  be  seen  in  a  subsequent  part  of  the  chapter  on 
the  waters,  have  been  so  successfully  employed  in  the  Val  di  Chiana  and  in 
Egypt,  might  have  elevated  the  low  grounds  above  the  ocean  tides,  by 
spreading  over  them  the  sediment  brought  down  by  the  Rhine,  the  Maes, 
and  the  Scheld.  If  this  process  had  been  introduced  in  the  Middle  Ages 
and  constantly  pursued  to  our  times,  the  superficial  and  coast  geography, 
as  well  as  the  hydrography  of  the  countries  in  question,  would  undoubt 
edly  have  presented  an  aspect  very  different  from  their  present  condition  ; 
and  by  combining  the  process  with  a  system  of  maritime  dikes,  which 


APPENDIX.  561 

would  have  been  necessary,  both  to  resist  the  advance  of  the  sea  and  to 
retain  the  slime  deposited  by  river  overflows,  it  is  possible  that  the  terri 
tory  of  those  states  would  have  been  as  extensive  as  it  now  is,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  more  elevated  by  several  feet.  But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  we  do  not  know  the  proportions  in  which  the  marine  deposits  that 
form  the  polders  have  been  derived  from  materials  brought  down  by  these 
rivers  or  from  other  more  remote  sources.  Much  of  the  river  slime  has  no 
doubt  been  transported  by  marine  currents  quite  beyond  the  reach  of  re 
turning  streams,  and  it  is  uncertain  how  far  this  loss  has  been  balanced 
by  earth  washed  by  the  sea  from  distant  shores  and  let  fall  on  the  coasts 
of  the  Netherlands  and  other  neighboring  countries. 

We  know  little  or  nothing  of  the  quantity  of  solid  matter  brought  down 
by  the  rivers  of  Western  Europe  in  early  ages,  but,  as  the  banks  of  those 
rivers  are  now  generally  better  secured  against  wash  and  abrasion  than  in 
former  centuries,  the  sediment  transported  by  them  must  be  less  than  at 
periods  nearer  the  removal  of  the  primitive  forests  of  their  valleys.  Kloden 
states  the  quantity  of  sedimentary  matter  now  annually  brought  down  by 
the  Rhine  at  Bonn  to  be  sufficient  only  to  cover  a  square  English  mile  to 
the  depth  of  a  little  more  than  a  foot. — Erdkunde^  I.  p.  384:. 

No.  42  (page  358,  first  paragraph).  Meteorological  observations  have 
been  regularly  recorded  at  Zwanenburg,  near  the  north  end  of  the  Lake  of 
Haarlem,  for  more  than  a  century,  and  since  1845  a  similar  register  has 
been  kept  at  the  Helder,  forty  or  fifty  miles  farther  north.  In  comparing 
these  two  series  of  observations,  it  is  found  that  about  the  end  of  the  year 
1852,  when  the  drawing  off  of  the  waters  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem  was 
completed,  and  the  preceding  summer  had  dried  the  grounds  laid  bare  so 
as  greatly  to  reduce  the  evaporable  surface,  a  change  took  place  in  the 
relative  temperature  of  the  two  stations.  Taking  the  mean  of  every  suc 
cessive  period  of  five  days  from  1845  to  1852,  the  temperature  at  Zwanen 
burg  was  thirty -three  hundredths  of  a  centigrade  degree  lower  than  at  the 
Helder.  Since  the  end  of  1852,  the  thermometer  at  Zwanenburg  has  stood, 
from  the  llth  of  April  to  the  20th  of  September  inclusive,  twenty-two 
hundredths  of  a  degree  higher  than  at  the  Ilelder,  but  from  the  14th  of 
October  to  the  17th  of  March,  it  has  averaged  one-tenth  of  a  degree  lower 
than  its  mean  between  the  same  dates  before  1853. 

There  is  no  reasonable  doiibt  that  these  differences  are  due  to  the  drain 
ing  of  the  lake.  There  has  been  less  refrigeration  from  evaporation  in 
summer,  and  the  ground  has  absorbed  more  solar  heat  at  the  same  period, 
while  in  the  winter  it  has  radiated  more  warmth  then  when  it  was  cover 
ed  with  water.  Doubtless  the  quantity  of  humidity  contained  in  the 
atmosphere  has  also  been  affected  by  the  same  cause,  but  observations  do 
not  appear  to  have  been  made  on  that  point.  See  KRKOKE,  Het  Kllmaat 
ran  Nederland,  II.  64. 
36 


562  APPENDIX. 

No.  43  (page  358,  note).  In  the  course  of  the  present  year  (1864),  there 
have  been  several  land  slips  on  the  borders  of  the  Lake  of  Oomo,  and  in 
one  instance  the  grounds  of  a  villa  lying  upon  the  margin  of  the  water 
suffered  a  considerable  displacement.  If  the  lake  should  be  lowered  to 
any  considerable  extent,  in  pursuance  of  the  plan  mentioned  in  the  note  on 
page  358,  there  is  ground  to  fear  that  the  steep  shores  of  the  lake  might, 
at  some  points,  be  deprived  of  a  lateral  pressure  requisite  to  their  stability, 
and  slide  into  the  water  as  on  the  Lake  of  Lungern.  See  p.  356. 

No.  44  (page  309,  last  paragraph  but  one  of  note).  In  like  manner, 
while  the  box,  the  cedar,  the  fir,  the  oak,  the  pine,  "beams,"  and  "tim 
ber,"  are  very  frequently  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament,  not  one  of  these 
words  is  found  in  the  New,  except  the  case  of  the  "  beam  in  the  eye,"  in 
the  parable  in  Matthew  and  Luke. 

No.  45  (page  375,  note).  In  all  probability,  the  real  change  effected  by 
human  art  in  the  superficial  geography  of  Egypt,  is  the  conversion  of  pools 
and  marshes  into  dry  land,  by  a  system  of  transverse  dikes,  which  compel 
led  the  flood  water  to  deposit  its  sediment  on  the  banks  of  the  river  instead 
of  carrying  it  to  the  sea.  The  colmate  of  modern  Italy  were  thus  antici 
pated  in  ancient  Egypt. 

No.  46  (page  378).  We  have  seen  in  Appendix,  No.  40,  ante,  that  the 
mean  temperature  of  a  station  on  the  borders  of  the  Lake  of  Haarlem — a 
sheet  of  water  formerly  covering  sixty-two  and  a  half  square  English 
miles — for  the  period  between  the  llth  of  April  and  the  20th  of  Septem 
ber,  had  been  raised  not  less  than  a  degree  of  Fahrenheit  by  the  draining 
of  that  lake ;  or,  to  state  the  case  more  precisely,  that  the  formation  of  the 
lake,  which  was  a  consequence  of  man's  improvidence,  had  reduced  the 
temperature  one  degree  F.  below  the  natural  standard.  The  artificially 
irrigated  lands  of  France,  Piedmont,  and  Lombardy,  taken  together,  are 
fifty  times  as  extensive  as  the  Lake  of  Haarlem,  and  they  are  situated  in 
climates  where  evaporation  is  vastly  more  rapid  than  in  the  Netherlands. 
They  must  therefore,  no  doubt,  affect  the  local  climate  to  a  far  greater 
extent  than  has  been  observed  in  connection  with  the  draining  of  the  lake 
in  question.  I  do  not  know  that  special  observations  have  been  made  with 
a  view  to  measure  the  climatic  effects  of  irrigation,  but  in  the  summer  I 
have  often  found  the  morning  temperature,  when  the  difference  would 
naturally  be  least  perceptible,  on  the  watered  plains  of  Piedmont,  nine 
miles  south  of  Turin,  several  degrees  lower  than  that  recorded  at  an  ob 
servatory  in  the  city. 

No.  47  (page  391,  note).  The  Roman  aqueduct  known  as  the  Pont  du 
Gard,  near  Nismes,  was  built,  in  all  probability,  nineteen  centuries  ago. 
The  bed  of  the  river  Garden,  a  rather  swift  stream,  which  flows  beneath 
it,  can  have  suffered  but  a  slight  depression  since  the  piers  of  the  aqueduct 
were  founded. 


APPENDIX.  563 

No.  48  (page  393,-jfo-sf  note).  Duponchel  makes  the  following  remark 
able  statement:  "The  river  Herault  rises  in  a  granitic  region,  but  soon 
reaches  calcareous  formations,  which  it  traverses  for  more  than  sixty- 
kilometres,  rolling  through  deep  and  precipitous  ravines,  into  which  tbe 
torrents  are  constantly  discharging  enormous  masses  of  pebbles  belonging 
to  the  hardest  rocks  of  the  Jurassian  period.  These  debris,  continually 
renewed,  compose,  even  below  the  exit  of  the  gorge  where  the  river  enters 
into  a  regular  channel  cut  in  a  tertiary  deposit,  broad  beaches,  prodigious 
accumulations  of  rolled  pebbles,  extending  several  kilometres  down  the 
stream,  but  they  diminish  in  size  and  weight  so  rapidly  that  above  the 
mouth  of  the  river,  which  is  at  a  distance  of  thirty  or  thirty-five  kilometres 
from  the  gorge,  every  trace  of  calcareous  matter  has  disappeared  from  the 
sands  of  the  bottom,  which  are  exclusively  silicious." — Avant-projet  pour 
la  creation  cTun  sol  fertile,  etc.,  p.  20. 

No.  49  (page  404,  first  paragraph  of  second  note).  The  length  of  the 
lower  course  of  the  Po  having  been  considerably  increased  by  the  filling 
up  of  the  Adriatic  with  its  deposits,  the  velocity  of  the  current  ought, 
prirna  facie,  to  have  been  diminished  arid  its  bed  raised  in  proportion. 
There  are  grounds  for  believing  that  this  has  happened  in  the  case  of  the 
Nile,  and  one  reason  why  the  same  effect  has  not  been  more  sensibly  per 
ceptible  in  the  Po  is,  that  the  confinement  of  the  current  by  continuous 
embankments  gives  it  a  high-water  velocity  sufficient  to  sweep  out  de 
posits  let  fall  at  lower  stages  and  slower  movements  of  the  water.  Tor 
rential  streams  tend  first  to  excavate,  then  to  raise,  their  bed?.  No  general 
law  on  this  point  can  be  stated  in  relation  to  the  middle  and  lower  course 
.of  rivers.  The  conditions  which  determine  the  question  of  the  depression 
or  elevation  of  a  river  bed  are  too  multifarious,  variable,  and  complex  to  be 
subjected  to  formulas,  and  they  can  scarcely  even  be  enumerated.  See, 
however,  note  on  p.  431. 

No.  50  (page  406,  first  paragraph).  The  system  proposed  in  the  text  is 
substantially  the  Egyptian  method,  the  Nile  dikes  having  been  constructed 
rather  to  retain  than  to  exclude  the  water.  The  waters  of  rivers  which 
flow  down  planes  of  gentle  inclination,  deposit  in  their  inundations  the 
largest  proportion  of  their  sediment  as  soon  as,  by  overflowing  their  banks, 
they  escape  from  the  swift  current  of  the  channel,  and  consequently  the 
immediate  banks  of  such  rivers  become  higher  than  the  grounds  lying 
farther  from  the  stream.  In  the  u  intervals,"  or  "  bottoms,"  of  the  great 
North  American  rivers,  the  alluvial  banks  are  elevated  and  dry,  the  flats 
more  remote  from  the  river  lower  and  swampy.  This  is  generally  observ 
able  in  Egypt,  though  less  so  than  in  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  where, 
below  Oape  Girardeau,  the  alluvial  banks  constitute  natural  glacis  descend 
ing  as  you  recede  from  the  river,  at  an  average  of  seven  feet  in  the  first 
mile. — IIuMPiiEETS  AXD  ABBOT'S  Report,  pp.  96,  97. 


564  APPENDIX. 

The  Egyptian  crossdikes,  by  retaining  the  water -of  the  inundations, 
compel  it  to  let  fall  its  remaining  slime,  and  hence  the  elevation  of  the 
remoter  land  goes  on  at  a  rate  not  very  much  slower  than  that  of  the  im 
mediate  banks.  Probably  transverse  embankments  would  produce  the 
same  effect  in  the  Mississippi  valley.  In  the  great  floods  of  this  river,  it  is 
observed  that,  at  a  certain  distance  from  the  channel,  the  bottoms,  though 
lower  than  the  banks,  are  flooded  to  a  less  depth.  See  cross  sections  in 
Plate  IV.  of  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  Keport.  This  apparently  anoma 
lous  fact  is  due,  I  suppose,  to  the  greater  swiftness  of  the  current  of  the 
overflowing  water  in  the  low  grounds,  which  are  often  drained  through  the 
channels  of  rivers  whose  beds  lie  at  a  lower  level  than  that  of  the  Missis 
sippi,  or  by  the  bayous  which  are  so  characteristic  a  feature  of  the  geog 
raphy  of  that  valley.  A  judicious  use  of  dikes  would  probably  convert 
the  swamps  of  the  lower  Mississippi  valley  into  a  region  like  Egypt. 

No.  51  (second  note).  The  mean  discharge  of  the  Mississippi  is  675,000 
cubic  feet  per  second,  and,  accordingly,  that  river  contributes  to  the  sea  about 
eleven  times  as  much  water  as  the  Po,  and  more  than  six  and  a  half  times 
as  much  as  the  Nile.  The  discharge  of  the  Mississippi  is  estimated  at  one- 
fourth  of  the  precipitation  in  its  basin,  certainly  a  very  large  proporiion, 
when  we  consider  the  rapidity  of  evaporation  in  many  parts  of  the  basin,  and 
the  probable  loss  by  infiltration. — HUMPHREYS  AND  ABBOT'S  Report,  p.  93. 

No.  52  (page  423,  first  paragraph).  Artificially  directed  currents  of 
water  have  been  advantageously  used  in  civil  engineering  for  displacing 
and  transporting  large  quantities  of  earth,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  this 
agency  might  be  profitably  employed  to  a  far  greater  extent  than  has  yet 
been  attempted.  Some  of  the  hydraulic  works  in  California  for  washing 
down  masses  of  auriferous  earth  are  on  a  scale  stupenduous  enough  to  pro 
duce  really  important  topographical  changes. 

No.  53  (page  435,  first  note).  I  have  lately  been  informed  by  a  resident 
of  the  Ionian  Islands,  who  is  familiar  with  this  phenomenon,  that  the  sea 
flows  uninterruptedly  into  the  sub-insular  cavities,  at  all  stages  of  the  tide. 

No.  54  (page  438,  note).  It  is  observed  in  Cornwall  that  deep  mines  are 
freer  from  water  in  artificially  well-drained,  than  in  undrained  agricultural 
districts. — ESQUIEOS,  JRevue  des  Deux  Mondcs,  Nov.  15,  1863,  p.  430. 

No.  55  (page  441).  See.  on  the  Artesian  wells  of  the  Sahara,  and  espe 
cially  on  the  throwing  up  of  living  fish  by  them,  an  article  entitled,  Le 
Sahara,  etc.,  by  Charles  Martins,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  for  August 
1,  1864,  pp.  618,  619. 

No.  56  (page  441,  first  note).  From  the  article  in  the  JRev.  des  Deux 
Mondes,  referred  to  in  the  preceding  note,  it  appears  that  the  wells  dis 
covered  by  Ay  me  were  truly  artesian.  They  were  bored  in  rock,  and 
provided  at  the  outlet  with  a  pear-shaped  valve  of  stone,  by  which  the 
orifice  could  be  closed  or  opened  at  pleasure. 


APPENDIX.  565 

No.  57  (page  477,  second  note).  Hull  ingeniously  suggests  that,  besides 
other  changes,  fine  sand  intermixed  with  or  deposited  above  a  coarser 
stratum,  as  well  ns  the  minute  particles  resulting  from  the  disintegration 
of  the  latter,  may  be  carried  by  rain  in  the  case  of  dunes,  or  by  the  ordi 
nary  action  of  sea  water  in  that  of  subaqueous  sandbanks,  down  through 
the  interstices  in  the  coarser  layer,  and  thus  the  relative  position  of  fine 
sand  and  gravel  may  be  more  or  less  changed. — Oorsprong  der  Hollandsche 
Duinen,  p.  103. 

No.  58  (page  479).  It  appears  from  Laurent,  that  marine  shells,  of  ex 
tant  species,  are  found  in  the  sands  of  the  Sahara,  far  from  the  sea,  and 
even  at  considerable  depths  below  the  surface. — Memoires  sur  le  Sahara 
Oriental,  p.  62. 

This  observation  has  been  confirmed  by  late  travellers,  and  is  an  im 
portant  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence  which  tends  to  prove  that  the  up 
heaval  of  the  Libyan  desert  is  of  comparatively  recent  date. 

No.  59  (p.  480).  "  At  New  Quay  [in  England]  the  dune  sands  are  con 
verted  to  stone  by  an  oxyde  of  iron  held  in  solution  by  the  water  which 
pervades  them.  This  stone,  which  is  formed,  so  to  speak,  under  our  eye, 
has  been  found  solid  enough  to  be  employed  for  building." — ESQI-IROS, 
L'Angleterre  et  la  vie  Anglaise,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  1  March,  1864,  pp. 
44,  45. 

No.  60  (page  496,  first  paragraph*).  In  Ditmarsh,  the  breaking  of  the 
surface  by  the  manceuvering  of  a  corps  of  cavalry  let  loose  a  sand-drift 
which  did  serious  injury  before  it  was  subdued. — KOHL,  Imeln  u.  Marschen. 
etc.,  III.  p.  282. 

Similar  cases  have  occurred  in  Eastern  Massachusetts,  from  equally 
slight  causes. — See  THOREATJ,  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers, 
pp.  151-208. 

No.  61  (page  497,  last  note).  A  more  probable  explanation  of  the  fact 
stated  in  the  note  is  suggested  by  fclisee  Reclus,  in  an  article  entitled,  Le 
Littoral  de  la  France,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  for  Sept.  1,  1864,  pp. 
193,  194.  This  able  writer  believes  such  pools  to  be  the  remains  of  ancient 
maritime  bays,  which  have  been  cut  off  from  the  ocean  by  gradually  accu 
mulated  sand  banks  raised  by  the  waves  and  winds  to  the  character  of 
dunes. 

No.  62  (page  506,  note).  The  statement  in  the  note  is  confirmed  by 
Olmsted:  "  There  is  not  a  sufficient  demand  for  rosin,  except  of  the  first 
qualities,  to  make  it  worth  transporting  from  the  inland  distilleries ;  it  is 
ordinarily,  therefore,  conducted  off  to  a  little  distance,  in  a  wooden  trough, 
and  allowed  to  flow  from  it  to  waste  upon  the  ground.  At  the  first  distil 
lery  I  visited,  which  had  been  in  operation  but  one  year,  there  lay  a  con 
gealed  pool  of  rosin,  estimated  to  contain  over  three  thousand  barrels." — 
A  Journey  in  the  Seaboard  Slace  States,  1863,  p.  345. 


566  APPENDIX. 

No.  63  (page  507).  In  an  article  on  the  dimes  of  Europe,  in  Vol.  29 
(1864)  of  Aus  der  Natur,  p.  590,  the  dunes  are  estimated  to  cover,  on  the 
islands  and  coasts  of  Schleswig  Holstein,  in  Northwest  Germany,  Denmark, 
Holland,  and  France,  one  hundred  and  eighty-one  German,  or  nearly  four 
thousand  English  square  miles ;  in  Scotland,  about  ten  German,  or  two 
hundred  and  ten  English  miles ;  in  Ireland,  twenty  German,  or  four  hun 
dred  and  twenty  English  miles  ;  and  in  England,  one  hundred  and  twenty 
German,  or  more  than  twenty-five  hundred  English  miles. 

No.  64  (page  512,  last  paragraph).  For  a  brilliant  account  of  the 
improvement  of  the  Landes,  see  Edmond  About,  Le  Progres,  Chap.  VII. 

In  the  memoir  referred  to  in  Appendix,  No.  46,  ante,  Diiponchel  pro 
poses  the  construction  of  artificial  torrents  to  grind  calcareous  rock  to 
slime  by  rolling  and  attrition  in  its  bed,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  washing 
down  of  an  argillaceous  deposit  which  is  to  be  mixed  with  the  calcareous 
slime  and  distributed  over  the  Landes  by  watercourses  constructed  for  the 
purpose.  By  this  means,  he  supposes  that  a  highly  fertile  soil  could  be 
formed  on  the  surface,  which  would  also  be  so  raised  by  the  process  as  to 
admit  of  freer  drainage.  That  nothing  maybe  wanting  to  recommend  this 
project,  Duponchel  suggests  that,  as  some  of  the  rivers  of  "Western  France 
are  auriferous,  it  is  probable  that  gold  enough  may  be  collected  from  the 
washings  to  reduce  the  cost  of  the  operations  materially. 

No.  65  (page  528,  first  paragraph).  The  opening  of  a  channel  across 
Cape  Cod  would  have,  though  perhaps  to  a  smaller  extent,  the  same 
effects  in  interchanging  the  animal  life  of  the  southern  and  northern  shores 
of  the  isthmus,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Suez  canal ;  for  although  the  breadth 
of  Cape  Cod  does  not  anywhere  exceed  twenty  miles,  and  is  in  some  places 
reduced  to  one,  it  appears  from  the  official  reports  on  the  Natural  History 
of  Massachusetts,  that  the  population  of  the  opposite  waters  differs  widely 
in  species. 

Not  having  the  original  documents  at  hand,  I  quote  an  extract  from  the 
Report  on  the  Invertebrate  Animals  of  Mass.,  given  by  Thoreau,  Excur 
sions,  p.  69  :  "  The  distribution  of  the  marine  shells  is  well  worthy  of 
notice  as  a  geological  fact.  Cape  Cod,  the  right  arm  of  the  Common 
wealth,  reaches  out  into  the  ocean  some  fifty  or  sixty  miles.  It  is  nowhere 
many  miles  wide ;  but  this  narrow  point  of  land  has  hitherto  proved  a 
barrier  to  the  migration  of  many  species  of  mollusca.  Several  genera  and 
numerous  species,  which  are  separated  by  the  intervention  of  only  a  few 
miles  of  land,  are  effectually  prevented  from  mingling  by  the  Cape,  and  do 
not  pass  from  one  side  to  the  other  *  *  *  *  Of  the  one  hundred  and 
ninety-seven  marine  species,  eighty-three  do  not  pass  to  the  south  shore, 
and  fifty  are  not  found  on  the  north  shore  of  the  Cape." 

Probably  the  distribution  of  the  species  of  mollusks  is  affected  by  un 
known  local  conditions,  and  therefore  an  open  canal  across  the  Cape  might 


APPENDIX.  567 

not  make  every  species  that  inhabits  the  waters  on  one  side  common  to 
those  of  the  other ;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  would  be  a  con 
siderable  migration  in  both  directions. 

The  fact  stated  in  the  report  may  suggest  an  important  caution  in 
drawing  conclusions  upon  the  relative  age  of  formations  from  the  character 
of  their  fossils.  Had  a  geological  movement  or  movements  upheaved  to 
different  levels  the  bottoms  of  waters  thus  separated  by  a  narrow  isthmus, 
and  dislocated  the  connection  between  those  bottoms,  naturalists,  in  after 
ages,  reasoning  from  the  character  of  the  fossil  faunas,  might  have  assigned 
them  to  different,  and  perhaps  very  widely  distant,  periods. 

No.  65  (page  548,  first  paragraph}.  To  the  geological  effects  of  the 
thickening  of  the  earth's  crust  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal,  are  to  be  added  those 
of  thinning  it  on  the  highlands  where  the  Ganges  rises.  The  same  action 
may,  as  a  learned  friend  suggests  to  me,  even  have  a  cosmical  influence. 
The  great  rivers  of  the  earth,  taken  as  a  whole,  transport  sediment  from 
the  polar  regions  in  an  equatorial  direction,  and  hence  tend  to  increase  the 
equatorial  diameter,  and  at  the  same  time,  by  their  inequality  of  action,  to 
a  continual  displacement  of  the  centre  of  gravity,  of  the  earth.  The  mo 
tion  of  the  globe  and  of  all  bodies  affected  by  its  attraction,  is  modified  by 
every  change  of  its  form,  and  in  this  case  we  are  not  authorized  to  say  that 
3uch  effects  are  in  any  way  compensated. 


D  E  X. 


A  BBEYS  of  St.  Germain  and  St.  Denis, 

J\.  revenues  of,  6. 

Adirondack  forest,  235  ;  lakes  of,  357. 

Ailanthus  gland  ulosa,  515. 

Akaba,  gulf  of,  infiltration  of  fresh  water 
in,  440. 

Albano,  lake  of,  artificial  lowering  of,  353. 

Algeria,  deserts  of,  artesian  wells  in,  443  ; 
sand  dunes  of,  463  ;  consolidated  dunes, 
480. 

Alpaca,  South  American,  83. 

Amazon,  Indians  of,  11. 

Ameland,  island  of,  499. 

America,  North,  primitive  physical  con 
dition  of,  27,  43  ;  forests  of,  28 ;  pos 
sibility  of  noting  its  physical  changes, 
62  ;  by  scientific  observation,  53  ;  for 
est  trees  of,  274  ;  sand  dunes  of,  469  ; 
proposed  changes  in  hydrography  of, 
532. 

Animal  life,  sympathy  of  ruder  races 
with,  39;  instinct/ fallibility  of,  40; 
hostility  of  civilized  man  to  inferior 
forms  of,  121. 

Animals,  wild,  action  of  on  vegetation,  78. 

Aphis,  the  European, -104. 

Apennines,  effects  of  felling  the  woods 
on,  150,  152. 

Appian  way,  the,  542. 

Aqueducts,  geographical  and  climatic  ef 
fects  of,  358. 

Arabia  Petrrea,  surface  drainage  of,  440  ; 
sandstone  of,  452  ;  sands  and  petrified 
wood  of,  455  ;  wadies  of,  538. 

Aragua,  valley  of,  Venezuela,  202. 

Ararat,  Mt.,  phenomenon  of  vegetation 
on,  287. 

Ard&che,  1',  department  of,  152  ;  de 
struction  of  forests  in,  389. 

—river  and  basin,  floods  of,  386 ;  supply  of 


water  to  the  Rhone,  388,  398  ;  violence 

of  inundations  of,  388  ;  damage  done 

by,  390;    effect   on  river   beds,   391; 

force  of  its  affluents,  392. 
Argostoli,    Cephalonia,    millstreams    of, 

434. 

Armenia,  ancient  irrigation  of,  366. 
Arno,  the  river,  deposits  of,  414  ;  upper 

course  of  in  the  Val  di   Chiana,  417, 

420. 
Artesian  wells,  their  sources,  441  ;  usual 

objects,  442;  occasional  effects,  442; 

employment   in   the   Algerian   desert, 

443  ;  by  the  French  Government,  444 ; 

success  and  probable  results  of,  445 ; 

known  to  the  ancients,  443  ;  depth  of, 

444. 

Arundo  arenaria,  501. 
Ascension,  island  of,  205. 
Auk,  the  wingless,  extirpation  of,  95. 
Australia  a  field  of  physical  observation, 

51. 
Avalanches,    Alpine,  various   causes  of, 

266  ;  by  felling  trees,  270. 
Azoff,  sea  of,  proposed  changes,  531. 

"DABIXET,  plan  for   artificial  springs, 

D  by,  448. 

Baikal  Lake,  the  fish  of,  117. 

Baltic  Sea,  sand  dunes  of,  467. 

Barcelonette,  valley  of,  former  fertility, 
243  ;  present  degradation  of,  244. 

Bavaria,  scarcity  of  fuel  in,  299. 

Bear,  the  mythical  character  of,  40. 

Beaver,  the,  agency  in  forming  bogs,  81 ; 
cause  of  its  increased  numbers,  84. 

Bee,  the  honey,  products  of,  105 ;  intro 
duction  in  United  States,  106. 

Belgium,  effect  of  plantations  in,  152; 
Campine  of,  513. 


INDEX. 


569 


Bon  Gusi,  district  of,  rock  formation  in,  ' 
537. 

Bergamo,  change  of  climate  in  the  val 
ley  of,  151. 

Bibliographical  list  of  authorities,  vii. 

Birch  tree  (black  and  yellow),  produce 
of,  171. 

Birds,  number  of,  in  United  States,  86 ; 
the  turkey,  dove,  pigeon,  87  ;  as  sowers 
and  consumers  of  seeds,  87 ;  as  destroy 
ers  of  insects,  89  ;  injurious  extirpation 
of,  90 ;  wanton  destruction  of,  92 ; 
weakness  of,  93  ;  instinct  of  migratory, 
91 ;  extinction  of  species,  95 ;  com 
mercial  value  of,  97 ;  introduction  of 
species,  98. 

Bison,  the  American,  78 ;  number  and 
migrations  of,  81,  83  ;  domesticated, 
135. 

Blackbird,  the  proscription  of,  91. 

Bogs,  formation  and  nomenclature  of, 
29-32  ;  of  New  England,  29 ;  repos 
itories  of  fuel,  80. 

Bremontier,  system  of  dune  plantations 
of,  503  ;  a  benefactor  to  his  race,  515. 

Breton,  Cap,  dune  vineyards  of,  508. 

Busbequius'  letters,  64. 

CAMEL,  the,  transfer  and  migrations  of, 
83  ;  injurious  to  vegetation,  132. 

Campiue  of  Belgium,  513. 

Canada  thistle,  the,  68. 

Canals,  geographic  and  climatic  effects 
of,  359  ;  injurious  effects  of  Tuscan, 
359;  projected,  Suez,  519;  Isthmus 
of  Darien,  522  ;  to  the  Dead  Sea,  524; 
maritime,  in  Greece,  526  ;  Saros,  527 ; 
Cape  Cod,  528 ;  the  Don  and  the  Volga, 
531 ;  Lake  Erie  and  the  Genesee,  532  ; 
Lake  Michigan  and  the  Mississippi,  533. 

Cape  Cod,  sand  dunes  of,  487  ;  legislative 
protection  of,  5o2  ;  vegetation  of,  503  ; 
projected  canal  through,  528. 

Cappercailzie,  the,  extinction  of,  in  Brit 
ain,  96. 

Carniola,  caves  of,  434. 

Caspian  Sea,  proposed  changes  in  its 
basin,  531. 

Catania,  lava  streams  of,  544. 

Catavothra  of  Greece,  536. 

Cevennes,  effects  of  clearing  the,  153. 

Champlain,  lake,  dates  of  its  congelation, 
163. 

Cherbourg,  breakwater  of,  46,  332. 

Chiaua,  Val  di,  description  and  character 
of,  417-42  > ;  plans  for  its  restoration, 

420  ;  artificial  drainage  of,  attempted, 

421  ;  successfully  executed,  423. 


Clergy,  mediaeval,  their  character,  282. 

Climatic  change,  discussions  of,  9  ;  how 
tested,  20;  causes  producing,  in  New 
England,  Africa,  Arabia  Petraea,  20- 
22  ;  man's  action  on,  difficult  to  ascer 
tain,  51  ;  deterioration,  71. 

Coal  mines,  combustion  of,  546. 

Coal,  sea,  early  use  of,  for  fuel,  222  ;  in 
creased  use  of,  in  Paris,  295. 

Coast  line,  change  of,  from  natural  causes, 
331 ;  subject  to  human  guidance,  332. 

Cochineal  insect  transferred  to  Spain, 
105. 

Cochituate  Aqueduct,  Boston,  103. 

Col  Isoard,  valley  of,  devastated,  242. 

Commerce,  modern,  on  what  dependent, 
60. 

Como,  lake  of,  proposed  lowering  of, 
358. 

Constance,  lake  of,  534. 

Cork-oak  tree,  yield  of,  311. 

Corporations,  social  and  political,  influ 
ence  of,  54. 

Cosmical  influences,  13. 

Cotton,  early  cultivation  of,  61  ;  can  be 
raised  by  white  labor,  381. 

Crawley  Sparrow  Club,  90. 

Currents,  sea,  strength  of,  456 ;  in  the 
Bosphorus,  457. 

Cuyahoga  river,  208. 

Cypress  tree,  its  beauty,  314. 

DARIEX,  Isthmus  of,  proposed  canal 
across,  522  ;  conjectural  eflects  of, 
523. 

Dead  Sea,  projected  canals  to,  524 ;  pos 
sible  results  of,  525. 

Deer,  numbers  of,  in  United  States',  82 ; 
tame,  injurious  to  trees,  130. 

Denmark,  peat  mosses  of,  22  ;  dunes  of, 
497  ;  extent  and  movement  of,  498 ; 
legislative  protection  of,  501,  504. 

Desert,  the,  richness  of  local  color,  445  ; 
mirage  in,  446. 

Des  Plaines  river,  533. 

Despotism  a  cause  of  physical  decay,  5. 

Dikes,  recovery  of  laud  by,  in  the  Nether 
lands,  335  ;  early  usage  and  immense 
extent  of,  336  ;  encouraged  by  the 
Spaniards,  337 ;  details  of  their  con 
struction  and  effect  on  the  land  gained, 
340-345  ;  in  Egypt,  413. 

Dinornis,  or  moa,  recent  extirpation  of, 
in  New  Zealand,  95. 

Dodo,  the,  extirpation  of,  95. 

Domestic  animals,  action  of,  on  vegetation, 
79  ;  origin  and  transfer  of,  8i  ;  inju 
rious  to  the  forest  growth,  130. 


570 


INDEX. 


Don  river,  proposed  diversion  of,  531. 
Draining   a   geographical  element,  360 ; 
superficial,  its  necessity  in  forest  lands, 

363  ;  effect  on  temperature,  364 ;  un 
derground,  ib.  ;  extensive   use   of,   in 
England,  362  ;  affects  the  atmosphere, 

364  ;  disturbs  the  equilibrium  of  river 
supply,  365 ;  by  boring,  362 ;  in  France, 
&c.,  362  ;  Paris,  363. 

Drance,  Switzerland,  glacier  lake  of,  403. 
Dry  land  and  water,  relative  extent  of,  178. 
Dwight,  Dr.,  Travels  in  the  United  States, 
characterized,  52. 

EARTH,  fertile,  below  the  rock,  537 ; 
transported  to  cover  rocky  surfaces, 
537. 

Earthquakes,  effects  of,  542 ;  causes  and 
possible  prevention  of,  543  ;  of  Lisbon, 
544. 

Earthworm,  utility  of,  in  agriculture,  100; 
multiplication  of,  in  New  England,  101. 

Egypt,  catacombs,  70;  papyrus  or  wa 
ter  lily,  70;  poisonous  snakes  of,  112  ; 
supposed  increase  of  rain  in,  190  ;  pro 
ductiveness  of,  230 ;  necessity  and  ex 
tent  of  irrigation  in,  368,  373  ;  cultiva 
ted  soil  of,  372,  374;  population  of, 
374;  amount  of  water  used  for  irriga 
tion,  380  ;  saline  deposits,  382 ;  artifi 
cial  river  courses  of,  402 ;  cultivated 
area  of,  412;  sands  of,  458;  their 
prevalence  and  extent,  459 ;  source  of, 
461 ;  action  on  the  Delta  and  cultiva 
ted  land,  462  ;  effect  of  the  diversion  of 
the  Nile  on,  529 ;  refuse  heaps  near 
Cairo,  541. 

Eland,  the,  preserved  in  Prussia,  86. 

Elm,  the  Washington,  Cambridge,  146. 

Elsineur,  artificial  formation  in  harbor  of, 
539. 

England,  forest  economy  of,  221,  large 
extent  of  ornamental  plantations^  222 ; 
Forests  of,  described  by  Caesar,  222 ; 
private  enterprise  in  sylviculture,  292 ; 
sand  dunes  of,  507. 

Enguerrand  de  Coucy,  cruelty  of,  281. 

Erie  Canal,  the,  influence  on  the  fauna 
and  flora  of  its  region,  116;  lake, 
depth  and  level  of,  532  ;  proposed  ca 
nal  from,  532. 

Espy's  theories  of  artificial  rain,  547. 

Etna,  volcanic  lava  and  dust,  131. 

Euphrates,  sand  plains  in  the  valley  of, 
511. 

Eye,  cultivation  of  the,  11 ;  control  of  the 
limbs  by,  12 ;  trained  by  the  study  of 
physical  geography,  12. 


FEUDALISM,  pernicious  influence  of, 
6. 

Fir  tree,  the,  its  products,  311. 

Fire  weed,  in  burnt  forests  of  the  United 
States,  287. 

Fish,  destruction  of,  by  man,  112,  114, 
120,  122;  voracity  of,  114;  introduc 
tion  and  breeding  of  foreign,  116  ;  nat 
uralization  of,  117;  inferiority  of  the 
artificially  fattened,  121. 

Fish,  shell,  extensive  remains  of,  in  Uni 
ted  States,  117;  of  Indian  origin,  128. 

Fish  ponds  of  Catholic  countries,  426. 

Fontainebleau,  forest  of,  34,  130 ;  poach 
ing  in,  284;  its  renovation,  316;  soil 
of,  513. 

Food,  ancient  arts  of  preservation  of,  18. 

Forest,  the,  influence  of,  on  the  humidity 
of  air,  162;  do.  of  earth,  165;  as  or 
ganic,  166 ;  balance  of  conflicting  influ 
ences  in,  176  ;  influence  on  tempera 
ture,  178;  on  precipitation,  181,  196; 
in  South  America,  184 ;  the  Canary  Isl 
ands  and  Asia  Minor,  185  ;  Peru,  188  ; 
Palestine,  Southern  France,  Scotland 
and  Egypt,  189;  influence  of,  on  hu 
midity  of  soil,  196;  on  springs,  197; 
in  Venezuela,  202  ;  New  Granada,  204 ; 
Switzerland  and  France,  205,  208 ; 
United  States,  207 ;  in  winter,  210 ; 
general  consequences  of  its  destruction, 
214 ;  on  the  earth,  springs,  rivers, 
215  ;  literature  of,  in  France,  217 ;  Ger 
many,  218 ;  Italy,  218  ;  England,  221 ; 
influence  of,  on  inundations,  223 ;  in 
North  America,  225 ;  disputed  effects 
of,  in  Europe,  228  ;  principal  causes  of 
its  destruction,  270 ;  in  British  Ameri 
ca,  271 ;  in  Europe,  279  ;  royal  forests, 
280 ;  effects  of  the  Revolution  on,  in 
France,  284 ;  utility  of,  for  the  preserva 
tion  of  smaller  plants,  286,  290 ;  do.  of 
birds,  291 ;  economic  utility  of,  and 
necessity  for  its  restoration,  292 ;  ex 
tent  of,  in  Europe,  296 ;  proportion  in 
different  countries  of,  300 ;  of  the  Uni 
ted  States  and  Canada,  300 ;  economy 
of,  303 ;  management  of,  in  France, 
304 ;  European  forests,  all  of  artificial 
growth,  305 ;  artificial  and  natural, 
their  respective  advantages,  307 ; 
American  do.,  their  peculiar  characteris 
tics,  313;  economic  action  of  cattle  on, 
325  ;  duty  of  preserving,  327  ;  average 
revenue  from,  327  ;  regulated  by  laws 
in  France,  395.  See  Trees,  Woods. 

Forests  of  North  America,  balance  of 
geographical  elements  in,  27;  agency 


INDEX. 


571 


of  quadrupeds  and  insects  in,  32 ;  in 
jury  to,  by  insects,  33  ;  meteorological 
importance  of,  139. 

Forest  laws,  mediaeval,  character  of,  217  ; 
do.  Jewish,  217;  severity  of,  in  France 
and  England,  280 ;  under  Louis  IX., 
281;  of  America,  created  by  circum 
stances,  302. 

France,  forest  literature  and  economy 
of,  217;  legislation  on  forests,  233; 

— Southeastern,  former  physical  state  of, 
237;  altered  condition  of,  239;  royal 
forests  of,  and  forest  laws,  280 ;  extent 
of,  in,  296;  ancient  lakes  of,  357  ;  in 
undations  of  1856  in,  393;  remedies 
against  inundations  in,  395  ;  sand  dunes 
of  Western,  485  ;  encroachments  of  the 
sea  on,  494. 

French  peasantry,  described  by  La  Bruy- 
ere,  6  ;  do.  Arthur  Young,  7  ;  of  Cham- 
bord,  283. 

Friesland,  sand  dunes  of,  489. 

Fucinus  Lake  (Lago  di  Celano),  drainage 
of,  by  the  Romans,  354  ;  moderns,  355. 

GAME  LAWS,  effect  on  the  numbers  of 
birds  in  France,  91 ;  in  England  and 
Italy,  92 ;  severity  of,  in  France,  283  ; 
unable  to  stop  poaching,  284. 

Ganges,  valley  of  the,  548. 

Gascony,  coast  sands  of,  453 ;  dunes  of, 
496 ;  extent  and  advance  of,  497 ;  fix 
ing  and  reclaiming  of,  504 ;  Landes  of, 
511 ;  their  reclamation,  512. 

Geological  influences,  13. 

Geographers,  new  school  of,  8. 

Geographical  influence  of  changes  pro 
duced  by  man,  352. 

Geography,  modern,  improved  form  of,  57-. 

German  Ocean,  sands  of,  454,  457. 

Germany,  extent  of  forests  in,  299. 

Glacier  lakes  in  Switzerland,  403. 

Goat,  the  Cashmere  or  Thibet,  83. 

Gold  fish,  the  migration  from  China,  116. 

Goldau,  Switzerland,  destruction  of,  268. 

Grape  disease,  its  economic  effect  in 
France,  Italy,  Sicily,  72. 

Grasshopper,  the  rapid  increase  in  Ameri 
ca,  291. 

Gravedigger  beetle,  the,  107. 

Greece,  proposed  maritime  canals  in, 
through  the  Corinthian  Isthmus,  526; 
Mount  Athos,  527 ;  subterranean  wa 
ters  of,  536. 

Gulls,  sea,  habits  of,  98. 

Gulf  stream,  the,  523. 

Gunpowder  chiefly  used  for  industrial 
purposes,  335. 


HAARLEM  Lake,  origin  and  extent  of, 
346,  347;    reasons   for  draining   it, 

348 ;  means  employed,  349 ;  successful 

results,  350. 

Hauran,  the  productions  of,  its  soil,  74. 
Heilbronn,  springs  at,  207. 
Herring  fishery,  produce  of,  120. 
Hessian  fly,  introduction  of  in  the  United 

States,  104. 
Honey  bee,  the  wild,  New  England,  legal 

usage,  302. 

Humid  air,  movement  of,  183. 
Hunter  in  New  England,  exploits  of,  82. 

IBEX,  the  Alpine,  86. 
India,  saline  efflorescence  of  its  soil, 
382  ;    natural  connection  of  rivers  in, 
401. 

Insects,  injurious  to  vegetable  life,  33 ; 
utility  of,  99 ;  agency  in  the  fertiliza 
tion  of  orchids,  102 ;  mass  of  their 
exuvias  in  South  America,  102 ;  intro 
duction  of  injurious  species,  104,  106  ; 
ravages  of,  105;  tenacity  of  life  in, 
106 ;  the  carnivorous,  useful  to  man, 
107 ;  destruction  of,  by  fish,  108 ;  abun 
dance  of,  in  Northern  Europe,  108  ; 
destruction  of,  by  birds,  109  ;  do.  quad 
rupeds,  110;  do.  reptiles,  110;  do  not 
multiply  in  the  forest,  291 ;  confine 
themselves  to  dead  trees,  322. 

Inundations,  influence  of  the  forest  on, 
223 ;  of  the  German  Ocean,  334 ; 
means  for  obviating,  384;  of  1856  in 
France,  393;  remedies  against,  395; 
legislative  regulation  of  the  woodlands 
in  France  for  prevention  of,  396  ;  pro 
posed  basins  of  reception,  398 ;  do.  in 
Peru  and  Spain,  400  ;  Rozet's  plan  for 
diminishing,  406. 

Irrigation,  remote  date  of  in  ancient  na 
tions,  366 ;  among  Mexicans  and  Peru 
vians,  366  ;  its  necessity  in  hot  cli 
mates,  367 ;  in  Europe,  367 ;  in  Pales 
tine,  368;  in  Idumcea,  370;  Egypt, 
371,  373 ;  quantity  of  water  so  applied, 
376,  377;  extent  of  lands  irrigated, 
396  ;  effects  of,  378  ;  on  river  supply, 
380 ;  on  human  health,  381 ;  saline 
deposits  from,  in  India  and  Egypt,  382  ; 
effect  of,  on  vegetable  crops,  378 ;  on 
the  soil,  379  ;  economic  evils  of,  379. 

Islands,  floating,  in  Holland  and  South 
America,  349,  351. 

Ijssel  river,  Holland,  535. 

Italy,  effects  of  the  denudation  of  its  for 
ests,  220 ;  political  condition  adverse 
to  their  preservation,  219  ;  beauty  of 


572 


INDEX. 


its  whiter  scenery,  314 ;  extent  of  irri 
gation  in,  368  ;  atmospheric  phenomena 
of  Northern,  368. 

JUPITER,  satellites  of,   visible  to  the 
eye,  12. 

Jutland,  effects  of  felling  the  woods  in, 
150 ;  destruction  of  forests  in,  279 ; 
encroachments  of  the  nea  on,  491. 

KANDER   river,  Switzerland,  artificial 
course  of,  403. 

Karst,  the  subterranean  waters  of,  536. 
Kjokkenmoddinger     in    Denmark,     16; 

their  extent,  540. 

Kohl,  J.  G.,  "  the  Herodotus  of  modern 
Europe,"  340;  on  dune  sand,  475. 

T  ABRUGUIJ5RE,  commune  of,  208. 

Ju  Lffistadius,  account  of  the  Swedish 
Laplanders,  96. 

Lakes,  draining  of,  by  steam  hydraulic  en 
gines,  346 ;  natural  process  of  filling  up 
by  aquatic  vegetation,  349 ;  lowering 
of,  in  ancient  and  modern  times,  353 ; 
in  Italy,  354  ;  in  Switzerland,  356  ;  in 
convenient  consequences  of,  356 ; 
mountain,  their  disappearance,  357. 

Landscape  beauty,  insensibility  of  the  an 
cients  to,  2 ;  of  the  oasis  and  the  des 
ert,  445. 

Lava  currents,  diversion  of  their  course, 
544;  from  Vesuvius,  phenomena  of, 
545 ;  heat  emitted  by,  545. 

Life,  balance  of  animal  and  vegetable, 
103. 

Liimfjord,  the,  irruption  of  the  sea  into, 
491 ;  aquatic  vegetation  of,  492  ;  origi 
nal  state  of,  519. 

Lion,  an  inhabitant  of  Europe,  85. 

Lisbon,  earthquake  of,  544. 

Locust,  the,  does  not  multiply  in  woods, 
296  ;  tree  and  insect,  32. 

Lombardy,  statistics  of  irrigation  in,  376. 

Louis  IX.,  of  France,  clemency  of,  282. 

Lower  Alps,  department  of,  ravages  of 
torrents  in,  246. 

Lumber  trade  of  Quebec,  271 ;  of  United 
States,  1850-^0,  301. 

Lungern,  lake  of,  lowering  of,  356. 

MADAGASCAR,  gigantic  bird  of,  96 ; 
the  ai-ai  of,  110. 

Madder,  early  cultivation  of,  in  Europe,  20. 
Madeira,  named  from  its  forests,  129. 
Maize,  early  cultivation  of,  law  of  its  ac 
climation,  19  ;  native  country  of,  73. 


Malta,  transported  soil  of,  538  ;  salt  works 
at,  540. 

Man,  reaction  of,  on  nature,  8 ;  insuffi 
ciency  of  data,  9 ;  geographical  influ 
ence  of,  13;  physical  revolutions 
wrought  by,  14  ;  unpremeditated  re 
sults  of  conscious  action,  15;  ancient 
relics  of,  in  old  geological  formations, 
16  ;  mechanical  effects  of,  on  the  earth's 
surface,  25  ;  destructiveness  of,  85 ;  in 
animal  life  and  inorganic  nature,  36- 
39  ;  character  of  his  action  compared 
with  that  of  brutes,  42 ;  subversive  of 
the  balance  of  nature,  43 ;  sometimes 
exercised  for  good,  44 ;  present  limits 
to,  45  ;  transfer  of  vegetable  life  by, 
59 ;  remains  of,  76 ;  contemporary 
with  the  mammoth,  77  ;  agency  in  the 
extermination  of  birds,  96  ;  do.  intro 
duction  of  species,  98 ;  increase  of 
insect  life,  104 ;  introduction  of  new 
forms  of  do.  by,  105  ;  destruction  of 
fish  by,  112,  120,  122;  extirpation  of 
aquatic  animals  by,  119  ;  possible  con 
trol  of  minute  organisms,  125  ;  his  first 
physical  conquest,  135  ;  his  action  on 
land  and  the  waters,  330 ;  possible 
geographical  changes  by,  517 ;  inci 
dental  effects  of  his  action,  539  ;  illimit 
able  and  ever  enduring  do.,  548. 

Maremme  of  Tuscany,  ancient  and  medi 
aeval  state  of,  425  ;  extent  of,  427  ;  in 
habitants,  428  ;  improvement  of,  429  ; 
sedimentary  deposits  of,  425,  430. 

Marine  isthmuses,  cutting  of,  517;  its 
difficulties,  518 ;  sometimes  done  by 
nature,  519. 

Marmato  in  Popayan,  205. 

Marshes,  climatic  effects  of  draining,  358  ; 
insalubrity  of  mixture  of  fresh  and  salt 
water  in,  417. 

Mechanic  arts,  illustration  of  their  mutu 
al  interdependence,  307. 

Medanos  of  the  South  American  desert, 
482. 

Mediterranean  Sea,  tides  of,  425  ;  sand 
dunes  of,  467 ;  poor  in  organic  life,  520. 

Mella,  the  river,  Italy,  248. 

Meteorology,  uncertainty  and  late  rise  of, 
16,  22;  varying  nomenclature  of,  23; 
precipitation  and  evaporation,  24. 

Michigan,  lake,  sand  dunes  of,  467  ;  origi 
nally  wooded,  487  ;  proposed  diversion 
of  its  waters,  532. 

Mining  excavations,  effects  of,  545. 

Minute  organisms,  their  offices,  123  ;  uni 
versal  diffusion  and  products  of,  124, 
127  ;  possible  control  of  their  agency 


INDEX. 


573 


by  man,  125;  the  coral  insect,  125; 
the  diatomaceae,  126. 

Miramichi,  great  fire  of,  28. 

Mistral  in  France,  153. 

Mississippi  river,  "  cut  offs  "  and  their  ef 
fect,  415;  precipitation  in  the  valley 
of,  436 ;  projected  canal  to,  533. 

Mountain  slides,  their  cause,  265,  268  ; 
their  frequency  in  the  Alps,  267. 

Mountainous  countries,  their  liability  to 
physical  degradation,  50. 

Monte  Testaccio,  Rome,  541. 

Moose  deer,  the  American,  rapid  multi 
plication  of,  130. 

Mushrooms,  poisonous,  how  to  render 
harmless,  286. 

"V[  ATURAL  forces,  accumulation  of,  46 ; 

ll    resistance  to,  542. 

Nature,  man's  reaction  on,  8 ;  observa 
tion  of,  10  ;  stability  of,  27,  34  ;  res 
toration  of  disturbed  harmonies  of,  35  ; 
nothing  small  in,  548. 

Naturalists,  enthusiasm  of,  99. 

Netherlands,  ancient  inundations  of,  334  ; 
recovery  of  land  by  diking,  334  ;  the 
practice  derived  from  the  Romans, 
335  ;  extent  of  land  gained  from  the 
sea,  336  ;  do.  lost  by  incursions  of  do., 
337;  character  of  lands  gained,  338; 
natural  process  of  recovery,  339 ;  gran 
deur  of  the  dike  system  of,  340  ;  meth 
od  of  their  construction  in,  341  ;  modes 
of  protection,  343  ;  various  uses  of, 

343  ;  effect  on  the  level  of  the  land, 

344  ;  drainage  of  do.,  345  ;    primitive 
condition  of,  351  ;  effects  on  the  social, 
moral,  and  economic  interests  of  the 
people  of,   351;  sand  dunes  of,  486; 
encroachments   of    the   sea  on,    494; 
artificial  dunes  in,  499  ;  protection  of 
dunes  in,  500;  removal  of  do.,  509. 

Nile,  the  river,  valley  of,  374 ;  its  ancient 
state,  375;  inundations  of,  385;  water 
delivery  of,  3S7;  artificial  mouths  of, 
402;  consequences  of  diking,  410, 
413  ;  richness  of  its  deposits,  411  ;  ex 
tent  of  do.,  412  ;-mud  banks  caused  by 
its  deposits,  433  ;  sand  dunes  at  its 
mouths,  468  ;  conduits  for  irrigation, 
521 ;  proposed  diversion  of,  528  ;  not 
impossible,  529  ;  effects  of,  530  ;  cera 
mic  banks  of,  541. 

Northmen  in  New  England,  60. 

Nubians,  Nile  boats  of  the,  17. 

Numbers,  the  frequent  error  in  too  defi 
nite  statements  of,  260;  oriental  and 
Italian  usage  of,  261. 


OAK,  the  English,  early  uses  in  the  arts, 
223  ;  "  openings  "  of  North  America, 
136. 

Ohio,  mounds  of,  18;  remains  of  a  prim 
itive  people  in,  135,  138;  apple  trees 
of,  22. 

Old  World,  former  populousness  of,  4 ; 
physical  decay  of,  3 ;  present  desola 
tion  of,  5 ;  its  causes,  5  ;  ancient  cli 
mate  of,  19;  physical  restoration  of, 

Olive  tree,  the  wild,  74 ;  importance  of, 
312. 

Orange  tree  known  to  the  ancients,  64, 
the  wild,  74. 

Orchids,  fertilization  of,  by  insects,  102. 

Organic  life  embraced  in  modern  geogra 
phy,  57  ;  its  geological  agency,  75 ; 
geographical  importance  of,  7  ;  bones 
and  relics  of,  human  and  animal,  76. 

Ostrich,  the,  diminution  of  its  numbers, 
97. 

Ottaquechee  river,  Vermont,  transporting 
power  of,  253. 

Otter,  the  American,  voracity  of,  1 20. 

Oxen,  agricultural  uses  of,  in  United 
States,  80. 

Oyster,  the,  transplantation  of,  118. 

PALESTINE,   ancient    terrace   culture 

L  and  irrigation  of,  369  ;  disastrous  ef 
fects  of  its  neglect,  370. 

Palissy,  Bernard,  character  of,  218  ;  plan 
for  artificial  springs,  447. 

Paragrandini  of  Lombardy,  141. 

Paramelle,  the  Abbe,  on  fountains,  437. 

Peat  beds,  accidental   burning  of,   546  ; 

— mosses  of  Denmark,  32. 

Pecora,  river  of  the  Maremma,  its  depos 
its,  425. 

Peru,  ancient  progress  in  the  arts,  366  ; 
basins  of  reception  in,  400. 

Petra,  in  Idurnsea,  ancient  irrigation  at, 
370. 

Phosphorescence  of  the  sea  unknown  to 
the  ancients,  114. 

Physical  decay  of  the  earth's  surface,  3 ; 
its  causes,  5  ;  arrest  of,  in  new  countries, 
48  ;  forms  and  fornicitions  predisposing 
to,  49. 

Physical  geography,  study  of  recommend 
ed,  12  ;  restoration  of  the  earth,  8  ;  im 
portance  and  possibility  of,  26 ;  of 
disturbed  harmonics,  35  ;  of  the  Old 
World,  47. 

Pine,  the  American,  former  ordinary  di 
mensions  of,  275  ;  how  affected  by  the 
accidents  of  its  growth,  306  ;  the  mnri- 


574: 


INDEX. 


rime,  on  dune  sands  in  France,  506  ; 
the  pitch,  hardihood  of,  273  ;  unbrella, 
the,  most  elegant  of  trees,  309,  313  ; 
the  white,  rapidity  of  its  growth,  274. 

Pinus  cembra  of  Switzerland,  309. 

Pisciculture,  its  valuable  results,  118. 

Plants,  cultivated,  uncertain  identity  of 
ancient  and  modern,  19 ;  do.  of  wild  and 
domestic  species,  73 ;  changes  of  habit 
by  domestication,  19;  geographical  in 
fluence  of,  58  ;  foreign,  grown  in  United 
States,  61 ;  American,  grown  in  Europe, 
63  ;  modes  of  introduction,  64 ;  accident 
al  do.,  66 ;  power  of  accommodation  of, 
65  ;  how  affected  by  transfer,  68  ;  tena 
city  of  life  in  wild  species,  69  ;  extirpa 
tion  of,  70  ;  domestic  origin  of,  72  ;  spe 
cies  employed  for  protection  of  sand 
dunes,  500. 

Pliny,  the  elder,  theory  of  springs,  198, 
216. 

Po,  river,  ancient  state  of  its  basin,  255  ; 
modern  changes,  256  ;  its  floods,  tribu 
taries,  and  deposits,  256-261,  405 ; 
embankments  of,  385,  404 ;  sediment 
of,  410 ;  age  and  consequences  of  its 
embankments,  411;  mean  delivery  of, 
412;  salti  of,  415. 

Poland,  sand  plains  of,  514. 

Poplar,  the  Lombardy,  68  ;  characterized, 
313. 

Potato,  native  country  of,  73. 

Prairies,  conjectural  origin  of,  134. 

Provence,  physical  structure  of,  237 ;  an 
cient  state  of,  238 ;  destructive  action 
of  torrents  on,  236  ;  Alps  of,  245. 

Prussia,  sand  dunes  of,  485  ;  drifting  of, 
498  ;  measures  for  reclaiming  of,  505. 

AUADRUPEDS,    number    in     United 
Vc£  States,  79  ;  extirpation  of,  84. 
Quebec,  high  tides  of,  271 ;  lumber  trade 

of,  272. 

EAILWAYS,  scientific  uses  of,  53. 
j     Rain  water,  its  absorption  and  infil 
tration,  438,  439  ;  economizing  its  pre 
cipitation,  449. 

Ravenna,  cathedral  of,  60;  pine  woods 
of,  150. 

Red  Sea,  richness  of,  in  organic  life,  320 ; 
diversion  of  the  Nile  to,  its  effects,  530. 

Reindeer,  the,  83. 

Reservoirs,  geographic  and  climatic  effects 
of,  258. 

Reventlov's  organization  of  dune  economy 
in  Denmark,  504  ;  a  benefactor  to  his 
race,  515. 


Rhine,  river,  proposed  diversion  of,  533. 

Rice,  cultivation  of,  38 1. 

Rivers,  transporting  power  of,  252 ;  in 
Vermont,  253  ;  their  origin,  262  ;  in 
jury  to  their  banks  by  lumbermen,  277  ; 
conditions  of  their  rise  and  fall,  278  ; 
mutual  action  of  rivers  and  valleys, 
408  ;  effect  of  obstructions  in,  40*9 ; 
subterranean  course  of,  409  ;  confluen 
ces  of,  effect  on  the  current  below,  424 ; 
sediment  of,  its  extent,  547. 

River  beds,  natural  change  of,  401  ;  arti 
ficial  do.  in  Egypt,  402;  Italy  and 
Switzerland,  403. 

River  deposits,  408 ;  of  the  Nile,  410 ; 
the  Po,  411 ;  the  Tuscan  rivers,  414. 

River  embankments,  384  ;  their  use,  404 ; 
disadvantages,  405  ;  transverse  do.,  su 
periority  of,  406  ;  effects  of,  409. 

River  mouths,  obstructions  of,  430  ;  by 
sand  banks,  431  ;  accelerated  by  man's 
influence,  432  ;  effect  of  tidal  move 
ments,  432. 

Robin,  the  American,  voracity  of,  88. 

Rock  generally  permeable  by  water,  265. 

Roman  empire,  natural  advantages  of  its 
territory,  1 ;  increased  by  intelligent 
labor,  2  ;  physical  decay  of,  3  ;  present 
desolation,  4  ;  caused  by  its  despotism 
and  oppression,  5. 

Rozet's  plan  for  diminishing  inundations, 
406. 

Rude  tribes,  continuity  of  arts  among,  17; 
commerce  of,   18  ;  relations  to  organic  * 
life,  39;  and  to  nature,  41. 

Russia,  diminution  of  forests  in,  298  ;  ef 
fects  of,  on  rivers  and  lakes,  299 ;  sand 
drifts  of  the  steppes  of,  514  ;  attempts 
to  reclaim  them,  515. 

SACRAMENTO  City,  California,  effect 
of  river  dike  at,  405. 

Sand,  its  composition  and  origin,  452 ; 
action  of  rivers,  453  ;  ancient  deposits 
of,  454,  456;  amount  of,  carried  to  the 
Mediterranean,  455 ;  of  Egypt,  458, 
461  ;  movement  of,  by  the  wind,  459 ; 
drifts  of,  from  the  sea,  461 ;  dangers  of 
accumulation  of,  463  ;  two  forms  of 
deposit,  463  ;  drifting  of  dune,  495. 

Sand  banks,  aquatic,  468  ;  movement  of, 
469 ;  connect  themselves  with  the 
coast,  490. 

Sand  dunes,  how  formed,  464 ;  utiliza 
tion  of,  465 ;  inland,  of  the  South 
American  desert,  482  ;  their  peculiari 
ties,  483  ;  age,  character,  and  perma 
nence  of,  484  ;  naturally  wooded,  486  ; 


INDEX. 


>y 

management  of,  488 ;  coast,  sources  of 
supply,  465  ;  law  of  their  formation, 
466,  471,  483  ;  of  the  Mediterranean, 
467 ;  of  Lake  Michigan,  467 ;  of  the 
Nile  mouths,  468  ;  of  America,  469  ; 
of  Western  Europe,  470  :  literature  of, 
471 ;  height  of,  472  ;  humidity  of,  473  ; 
of  Cape  Cod,  487 ;  character  of  their 
sand,  474,  481 ;  concretion  within, 
476  ;  interior  structure  of,  477  ;  gener 
al  form  of,  478 ;  geological  importance 
of,  479;  composition  of  sandstone, 
481 ;  as  barriers  against  the  sea,  489  ; 
in  Western  Europe,  490;  extent  of, 
507 ;  of  Gascony,  496  ;  of  Denmark, 
497;  of  Prussia,  497 ;  artificial  forma 
tion  of,  in  Holland,  499  ;  protection  of, 
500  ;  by  vegetation,  501 ;  trees  adapt 
ed  to,  503  ;  removal  of,  509. 

Sand-dune  vineyard  of  Cap  Breton,  508. 

Sand  plains,  mode  of  deposit,  464  ;  con 
stituent  parts,  464 ;  inland,  of  Europe, 
509  ;  landes  of  Gascony,  511 ;  Belgium, 
51,');  Eastern  Europe,  513;  advanta 
ges  of  reclaiming,  515  ;  private  and 
public  enterprise,  510. 

Sand  springs,  511. 

Sandal  wood  extirpated  in  Juan  Fernan 
dez,  130. 

Saros,  projected  canal  of,  527. 

Sawmills,  action  of  their  machinery  more 
rapid  by  night,  278. 

Schelk,  the  extirpation  of,  85. 

Schleswig-Holstein,  encroachments  of  the 
sea  on,  493. 

Scientific  observation,  practical  lessons  of, 
54-56. 

Sea,  the,  exclusion  of,  by  dikes,  in  Lin 
colnshire,  333 ;  encroachments  of,  490 ; 
coast,  491 ;  the  Liimtjord,  491 ;  Schles 
wig-Holstein,  493;  Holland,  494; 
France,  494. 

Sea  cow,  Steller's,  extirpation  of,  119. 

Seal,  the,  in -Lake  Cham  plain,  117;  vo 
racity  of,  120. 

Seeds,  vitality  of,  as  preserved  bv  the 
forest,  287,  289. 

Seine  river,  ancient  level  of,  214 ;  afflu 
ents  of,  435. 

Ship  building  of  the  middle  ages,  Venice 
and  Genoa,  218. 

Siberia,  ice  ravine  in,  158. 

Sicily,  stone  weapons  found  in,  18  ;  sul 
phur  mines  of,  72  ;  olive  oil  crop  of, 
312. 

Silkworm,  introduction  in  South  America, 
J03. 


Sinai,  Mt.,  rain  torrent  at,  441 ;  produc 
tion  of  sand  in  peninsula  of,  454;  gar 
den  of  monastery  at,  537. 

Snakes,  destructive  to  insects,  110;  te 
nacity  of  species,  111;  number  of,  in 
Palestine  and  Egypt,  111. 

Snow,  action  of  the  woods  on,  211  ;  ex 
periments  on,  212. 

Soils,  amount  of  thennoscopic  action  on 
various,  144;  mechanical  effects  of 
shaking  in  the  Netherlands,  344  ;  effect 
of  frost  on,  in  United  States,  344. 

Solar  heat,  economic  employment  of,  47. 

Solitary,  the,  extirpation  of/95. 

Sound,  transmission  of,  in  still  air,  165. 

Springs,  artificial,  proposed  by  Palissy, 
447 ;  by  Babinet,  448. 

Spain,  neglect  of  forest  culture  in,  279. 

Squirrel,  the,  destructiveness  of,  in  for 
ests,  34  ;  of  Boston,  121. 

St.  Helena,  flora  of,  65  ;  destruction  of 
its  forests,  130. 

Staffordshire,  phenomena  of  vegetation 
in,  288. 

Starlings,  habits  of,  in  Piedmont,  111. 

Stork,  the,  geographical  range  of,  93 ;  an 
ecdote  of  a,  99. 

Subterranean  waters,  their  origin,  434 ; 
sources  of  supply,  435  ;  reservoirs  and 
currents  of,  438 ;  diffusion  of,  in  the 
soil,  439 ;  importance,  440 ;  of  the 
Karst,  535  ;  of  Greece,  536. 

Suez  canal,  the,  danger  from  sand  drifts, 
461  ;  effect  on  the  Mediterranean  and 
Red  Sea  basins,  520. 

Sugar  cane,  culture  of,  62. 

Sugar-maple  tree,  produce  of,  169. 

Summer  dikes  of  Holland,  342. 

Sunflowers,  effect  of  plantations  of,  154. 

Swallow,  the,  popular  superstitions  re 
specting,  418. 

Switzerland,  ancient  lacustrine  habitations 
of,  16,  70,  83. 

Sylt  Island,  sand  dunes  of,  474 ;  en 
croachments  of  the  sea  on,  493. 

Sylviculture,  best  manuals  of  practice  of, 
304  ;  when  and  how  profitable,  305  ; 
its  methods,  315  ;  the  id  ill  la  treatment, 
315;  t\\c  futaie  do.,  317  ;  beneficial  ef 
fects  of  irrigation,  319;  exclusion 'of 
animals,  321 ;  removal  of  leaves,  &c., 
322  ;  topping  and  trimming,  324. 

rFAGUATAGA  Lake,  Chili,  355. 

1     Tea  plant,  the,  cultivated  in  America. 

62. 

Temperature,  general  law  of,  52. 
Teredo,  the  general  diffusion  of,  107. 


»76 


INDEX. 


ermite,  or  white  ant,  ravages  of,  107. 

everone,  cascade  of,  Tivoli,  402. 

irnber,  general  superiority  of  cultivated, 
305  ;  slow  decay  of,  in  forest,  322. 

obacco  an  American  plant,  63 ;  intro 
duction  in  Hungary,  67. 

beat,  Asia  Minor,  oak  woods  of,  186. 

wnato,  the,  introduction  to  New  Eng 
land,  19. 

orricelli,  successful  plan  for  draining  the 
Val  di  Chiana,  421. 

or  rents,  destructive  action  of,  231 ; 
means  of  prevention,  233  ;  ravages  of, 
in  Southeastern  France,  237 ;  Pro 
vence,  239 ;  Upper  Alps,  240 ;  Lower 
Alps,  246  ;  action  of,  in  elevating  the 
beds  of  mainland  streams,  249  ;  in  ex 
cavating  ravines,  250 ;  transporting 
power  of,  251 ;  signs  of,  extinguished, 
263 ;  crushing  force  of,  392. 

rees,  as  organisms,  specific  temperature 
of,  156;  moisture  given  out  by,  158; 
total  influence  on  temperature,  159 ; 
absorption  of  water  by,  166 ;  flow  of 
sap,  169;  absorption  of  moisture  by 
foliage  of,  172 ;  exhalation  of  do.,  174 ; 
consequent  refrigeration,  175;  amount 
of  ligneous  products  of,  173 ;  protec 
tion  against  avalanches  afforded  by, 
269 ;  power  of  resisting  the  action  of 
fire,  273  ;  American  forest  trees,  274 ; 
'  their  dimensions,  275  ;  change  in  rela 
tive  proportions  of  height  and  diameter, 
276 ;  comparative  longevity  of,  277 ; 
European  and  American  compared, 
308 ;  species  more  numerous  in  Ameri 
ca,  309 ;  Spenser's  catalogue  of,  308  ; 
interchange  of  European  and  American 
species,  310;  species  of  Southern  Eu 
rope  and  their  extent,  312;  natural  or 
der  of  succession  in,  323.  See  Forest, 
Woods. 

rieste,  proposed  supply  of  water  to, 
536.  . 

'rout,  the  American,  115,  117,  121. 

'uscany,  rivers  of,  their  deposits,  414 ; 
physical  restoration  in,  416;  improve 
ments  in  Val  di  Chiana,  417;  do.  in 
the  Maremma,  424. 

'yrolese  rivers,  elevation  of  their  beds, 
249. 

7BATE,  lakes  of,  New  Granada,  204. 

J      Undulation  of  water,  456. 

Inited  States,  foreign  plants  grown  in, 
61 ;  weight  of  annual  harvest  in,  62  ; 
number  of  quadrupeds  in,  79 ;  of  birds, 
86 ;  effect  of  felling  woods  on  its  cli 


mate,  180;  forests  of,  300;  instabilits 

of  life  in,  328. 
Upper  Alps,  department  of,  ravages  ol 

torrents  in,  240. 
Urus,  or  auerochs,  domesticated  by  man, 

83 ;  extirpation  of,  85. 

YAL  de  Lys,  evidence  of  glacier  action 
in,  252. 

Vegetable  life,  transfer  by  man's  action, 
59. 

Velino,  cascade  of,  Tivoli,  402. 

Vesuvius,  vegetation  on,  131 ;  eruption 
of  February,  1851,  544. 

Volcanic  action,  resistance  to,  544  ;  mat 
ter,  vegetation  in,  131. 

Volga  river,  proposed  diversion  of,  531. 

WALCHEREN,  formation  of  the  island, 
340. 

Wallenstadt,  lake  of,  534. 

Walnut  tree,  consumption  of,  for  gun 
stocks,  296;  oil  yielded  by,  310. 

Ward's  cases  for  plants,  175. 

Waste  products,  utilization  of,  37. 

Weeds  common  to  Old  and  New  World, 
66;  extirpated  in  China,  &c.,  71. 

Whale,  the,  food  of,  113;  destruction  of, 
114. 

Whale  fishery,  date  of  its  commencement 
unknown,  112;  in  the  middle  ages, 
112;  American,  113. 

Wheat,  its  asserted  origin,  73  ;  introduc 
tion  to  America,  74. 

Wild  animals,  number  of,  84. 

Wild  organisms,  vegetable  and  animal, 
tenacity  of  life  in,  69. 

Willow,  the  weeping,  introduction  in  Eu 
rope,  64. 

Wolf,  increase  of  the,  84 ;  prevalence  in 
forests  of  France,  296. 

Wolf  Spring,  Soubey,  206. 

Wood,  increased  demand  for,  293 ;  ship 
building,  railroads,  &e.,  294;  market 
price  of,  294 ;  replaced  by  iron  in  the 
arts,  295 ;  means  of  increasing  its  dura 
bility,  295 ;  how  affected  by  rapid 
growth,  306 ;  facilities  for  working, 
307. 

Woods,  habitable  earth  originally  covered 
by,  128;  conditions  of  their  propaga 
tion,  131 ;  destructive  agency  of  man 
and  domestic  animals,  132 ;  do  not 
furnish  food  for  man,  133  ;  first  remov 
al  of,  134  ;  burning  of,  136  ;  in  Sweden 
and  France,  137;  effect  on  the  soil, 
138;  destruction  of,  its  effect,  139; 
electrical  influence  of,  140;  chemical 


INDEX. 


577 


influence  of,  142 ;  influence  on  tem 
perature,  143;  absorbing  and  emitting 
surface  of,  144;  in  summer  and  winter, 
147;  dead  products  of,  148;  as  a, 
shelter,  149;  in  France,  149,  151; 
New  England,  149;  Italy  and  Jut 
land,  150;  as  a  protection  against  ma 
laria,  1 54 ;  tend  to  mitigate  extremes 
of  temperature,  155.  See  Forest, 
Trees. 

Wood   mosses  and  fungi,  absorbent  of 
moisture,  168. 


Woodpecker,  the,   destroyer  of    insects, 
109. 


YAK,  or  Tartary  ox,  the,  83. 
Yew  tree,  geographical  range  of,  70. 

yEELAND,  province,  formation  of,  339. 

Lt     Zostera  marina,  492. 

Zuiderzee,   proposed   drainage  of,    534 ; 

means   of,    and    geographical    results, 

535. 


THE   END. 


FORSYTH'S  "CICERO." 


feiu  f  lit  at  Cima, 

BY  WILLIAM  FORSYTH,  M.  A.,  Q.C. 

Twenty  Illustrations.     2  vols.  crown  octavo.     Printed  on  tinted  and  laid 
paper.     Price,  $5.00. 


The  object  of  this  work  is  to  exhibit  Cicero  not  merely  as  a  Statesman  and 
an  Orator,  but  as  he  was  at  home  in  the  relations  of  private  life,  as  a  Husband, 
a  Father,  a  Brother,  and  a  Friend.  His  letters  are  full  of  interesting  details, 
which  enable  us  to  form  a  vivid  idea  of  how  the  old  Remans  lived  2,000  years 
ago  ;  and  the  Biography  embraces  not  only  a  History  of  Events,  as  momentous 
as  any  in  the  annals  of  the  world,  hut  a  large  amount  of  Anecdote  and  Gossip, 
which  amused  the  generation  that  witnessed  the  downfall  of  the  Republic. 

The  London  Atkenaswn  says  :  "  Mr.  Forsyth  has  rightly  aimed  to  set  before 
us  a  portrait  of  Cicero  in  the  modern  style  of  biography,  carefully  gleaning 
from  his  extensive  correspondence  all  those  little  traits  of  character  and  habit 
which  marked  his  private  and  domestic  life.  These  volumes  form  a  very 
acceptable  addition  to  the  classic  library.  The  style  is  that  of  a  scholar  and  a 
man  of  taste." 

From  the  Saturday  Review  :  —  "  Mr.  Forsyth  has  discreetly  told  his  story, 
evenly  and  pleasantly  supplied  it  with  apt  illustrations  from  modern  law, 
eloquence,  and  history,  and  brought  Cicero  as  near  to  the  present  time  as  the 
differences  of  age  and  manners  warrant.  *  *  *  These  volumes  we  heartily 
recommend  as  both  a  useful  and  agreeable  guide  to  the  writings  and  character 
of  one  who  was  next  in  intellectual  and  political  rank  to  the  foremost  man  of  aU 
the  world,  at  a  period  when  there  were  many  to  dispute  with  him  the  triple 
crown  of  forensic,  philosophic,  and  political  composition." 

"  A  scholar  without  pedantry,  and  a  Christian  without  cant,  Mr.  Forsyth 
seems  to  have  seized  with  praiseworthy  tact  the  precise  attitude  which  it  behoves 
a  biographer  to  take  when  narrating  the  life,  the  personal  life,  of  Cicero.  Mr. 
Forsyth  produces  what  we  venture  to  say  will  become  one  of  the  classics  of 
English  biographical  literature,  and  will  be  welcomed  by  readers  of  all  ages  and 
both  sexes,  of  all  professions  and  of  no  profession  at  all."  —  London  Quarterly. 

"  This  book  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  our  Standard  Literature.  It  is  a 
work  which  will  aid  our  progress  towards  the  truth  ;  it  lifts  a  corner  of  the  veil 
which  has  hung  over  the  scenes  and  actors  of  times  so  full  of  ferment,  and 
allows  us  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  stage  upon  which  {he  great  urama  wat 
played."  —  North  American  Review. 

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